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LIFE 01? 

THACKERAY. 

BY 

ANTHONY TROLLOPE, 
»i 

AUTHOR OF " MR. SCARBOROUGH'S FAMILY,» 
-THE PRIME MINISTER, " Etc. 

Rered at the Post Office, N. Y., as second-class mattec fBf 












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LOVELL'S LIBRARY -CATALOGUE. 



1. Hyperion, Longfellow .20 

2. Outre-Mer, do .20 

3. The Happy Boy, BjOm- 

son 10 

4. Arne, by BjOrnson ... .10 

5. Frankenstein, Shelley. .10 

6. Last of the Mohicans. .20 

7. Clytie. Joseph Hatton. .20 

8. The Moonstone, Part I .10 

9. The Moonstone, Part II .10 

10. Oliver Twist, Dickens. .20 

11. Coming Race, Lytton. .10 

12. Leila, by Lord Lytton. .10 

13. The Three Spaniards.. .20 

14. The Tricks of the 

Greeks Unveiled 20 

15. L'Abbe Constantin. .. .20 

16. Freckles, by Redcliff . .20 
ir. The Dark Colleen, Jay .20 

18. They- were Married!.. .10 

19. Seekers after God 20 

• 20. The Spanish Nun 10 

21. Green Mountain Boys .20 

22. Fleurette, Scribe 20 

23. Second Thoughts 20 

24. The New Magdalen. . . .20 

25. Divorce, Margaret Lee .20 

26. Life of Washington.. . .20 

27. Social Etiquette 15 

28. Single Heart and Dou- 
ble Face, Chas. Reade .10 

29. Irene, by Carl Detlef.. .20 
80. Vice Versa, F. Anstey .20 

31. Ernest Maltravers 20 

32. The Haunted House. .10 

33. John Halifax, 'Mulock .20 

34. 800 Leagues on the 

Amazon, by Verne.. .10 

35. The Cryptogram 10 

36. Life of Marion 20 

37. Paul and Virginia 10 

38. Tale of Two Cities 20 

39. The Hermits, Kingsley .20 

40. An Adventure in 

Thule, and Marriage 
of M. Fergus, Black. .10 

41. Marriage in High Life. .20 

42. Robin, by Mrs. Parr. . .20 

43. Two on a Tower 20 

44. Rasselas, Dr. Johnson .10 

45. Alice; or. Mysteries.. .20 

46. Dukeof Kandos 20 

47. Baron Munchausen. . . .10 

48. A Princess of Thule. . . .20 

49. The Secret Despatch.. .20 

50. Early Days of Chris- 

tianity 20 

Do., Part II 20 

51. Vicar of Wakefield... .10 

52. Progress and Poverty. .20 

53. The Spy, by Cooper. . .20 

54. East Lynne, Mrs Wood .20 

55. A Strange Story 20 

56. Adam Bede,Eliot,P't I .15 
Do, Partn 15 

57. The Golden Shaft 20 

58. Portia, by The Duchess .20 

59. Last Days of Pompeii, .20 

60. The Two Duchesses. . . .20 



61. Tom Brown's School 

Days. 20 

62. The Wooing O't, P,t I .15 
The Wooing O't, P't II .15 

63. The Vendeta. Balzac. .20 

64. Hypatia, by Kingsley, .15 
Do., Partn 15 

65. Selma, by Mrs, Smith. .15 

66. Margaret and her 

Bridesmaids * . . . .20 

67. Horse Shoe Robinson .15 
Do., Part II * .15 

68. Gulliver's Travels .20 

69. Amos Barton, by Eliot .10 

70. The Berber, by Mayo. .20 

71. Silas Marner, by Eliot .10 

72. Queen of the County . . 20 

73. Life of Cromwell, Hood. 15 

74. Jane Eyre, by Bronte. .20 

75. Child's Hist. England. .20 

76. Molly Bawn, Duchess .20 

77. Pillone, byBergsQe... .15 

78. Phyllis, The Duchess. .20 

79. Romola, Eliot, Pare I. .15 
Romola, Eliot, Part II ,15 

80. Science in Short Chap- 

ters 20 

81. Zanoni, by Lytton 20 

82. A Daughter of Heth... .20 

83. The Right and Wrong 

tJsesof the Bible 20 

84. Night and Morning... .15 

Do., Partn 15 

Shandon Bells, Black. .20 
Monica, The Duchess, .10 

Heart and Science . .20 

The Golden Calf 20 

The Dean's Daughter. .20 
Mrs. Geoffrey,Duche8s .20 

91. Pickwick Papers, Pt I .20 
Do., Part II 20 

92. Airy, Fairy Lilian 20 

93. Macleod of Dare 20 

94. Tempest Tossed 20 

Do., Part II 20 

Letters from High Lat- 
itudes. Earl Dufferin .20 

Gideon Fleyce 20 

India and Ceylon 20 

The Gypsy Queen, 20 

The Admiral's Ward. . .20 

100. Nimport, Bynner, P't 1 .15 
Nimport, Part IE 15 

101. Harry Holbrooke 20 

102. Tritons, Bynner, P't I. .15 
Tritons, Part 11 15 

103. Let Noth'g You Dismay . 10 

104. Lady Audley'S Secret. 20 

105. Woman's Place To-day .20 

106. Dunallan,by Kennedy .15 
Do., Part II 15 

107. Housekeeping and 

Homemaking .15 

108. No New Thing, Norris .20 

109. Spoopendyke Papers. ,20 
1 W. False Hopes.'." . 15 

111. Labor and Capital 20 

112. Wanda, Ouida,.Part I. .15 
Wanda, Part II 15 



85. 
86. 
87. 
88. 
89. 
90. 



95. 
96. 



99. 



113. More Words about 

the Bible 20 

114. Moiisieur Lecoq, P't I .20 
Monsieur Lecoq, P'tII.20 

115. Outline of Irish Hist. .10 

116. The Lerouge Case 20 

117. Paul Clifford, Lytton. .20 

118. A New Lease of Life.. .20 

119. Bourbon Lilies, 20 

120. Other People's Money .20 

121. The Lady of Lyons, .10 

122. Ameline du Bourg... .15 

123. A Sea Queen, Russell. '.20 

124. The Ladies Lindores.. 20 

125. Haunted Hearts 10 

1~'6. Loi's, Lord Beresford. .20 

127. Under Two Flags 20 

Do. (Ouida), Part II... .20 

128. Money, Lord Lytton.. .IQ 

129. In Peril of his Life... .20 

130. India; What Can it 

Teach Us? M.Miiller .20 
1 81. Jets and Flashes 20 

132. Moonshine and Mar- 

guerites 10 

133. Mr. Scarborough's 

Family 15 

Do., Partll 15 

134. Arden, Mary Robinson .15 

135. Tower of Percemont.. .20 

136. Yolande, Wm. Black. .20 

137. Cruel London^Hatton .20 

138. The Gilded Clique 20 

139. Pike County Folks... .20 

140. Cricket on the Hearth .10 

141. Henry Esmond . . .20 

142. Strange Adventures of 

a Phaeton 20 

143. Denis Duval, Thack- 

eray 10 

144. Old Curiosity Shop .15 
Do., Part II 15 

145. Ivanhoe, Scott, P't I. .15 
Do, Part II 15 

146. White Wings, Black. .20 

147. The Sketch Book 20 

148. Catherine, Thackeray .10 

149. Janet's Repentance.. .10 

150. Barnaby Rudge, P't I .15 
Barnaby Rudge, PtII .15 

151. Felix Holt, by Eliot.. .20 
1^2. Richelieu, by Lytton. .10 

153. Sunrise, Black, P't I. .15 
Do, Part II 15 

154. Tour of the World in 

Eighty Days, Verne .20 

155. Mystery of Orcival... .20 

156. Lovel, the Widower. , .10 

157. Romantic Adventures 

of a Milkmaid. Hardy .10 

158. David Copperfield 20 

Do, Part II 20 

159. Charlotte Temple 10 

160. Rienzi, Lytton, Parti .15 
Do., Part 11 15 

161. Promise of Marriage. .10 

162. Faith and Unfaith... .20 

163. The Hanpy Man 10 

164. Barry Lyndon 20 



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THACKERAY. 

CHAPTER I. 

BIOGRAPHICAL. 

In the foregoing volumes of this series of English Men of 
Letters^ and in other works of a similar nature which have appeared 
lately as to the Aticien-i Classics and Foreign Classics, biography 
has naturally been, if not the leading, at any rate a considerable 
element. The desire is common to all readers to know not only 
what a great writer has written, but also of what nature has been 
the man who has produced such great work. As to all the authors 
taken in hand before, there has been extant some written record of 
the man's life. Biographical details have been more or less known 
to the world, so that, whether of a Cicero, or of a Goethe, or of 
our own Johnson, there has been a story to tell. Of Thackeray no 
life has been written ; and though they who knew him — and possi- 
bly many who did not — are conversant with anecdotes of the man, 
who was one so well known in society as to have created many an- 
ecdotes, yet there has been no memoir of his life sufficient to supply 
the wants of even so small a work as tljis purports to be. For this 
the reason may simply be told. Thackeray, not long before his 
death, had had his taste offended by some fulsome biography. 
Paragraphs, of which the eulogy seemed to have been the produce 
rather of personal love than of inquiry or judgment, disgusted him, 
and he begged of his girls that when he should have gone there 
should nothing of the sort be done with his name. 

We can imagine how his mind had worked, how he had declared 
to himself that, as by those loving hands into which his letters, his 
notes, his little details — his literary remains, as such documents 
used to be called — might naturally fall, truth of his foibles and of 
his shortcomings could not be told, so should not his praises be 
written, or that flattering portrait be limned which biographers are 
wont to produce. Acting upon these instructions, his daughters- 
while there were two living, and since that the one surviving — have 
carried out the order which has appeared to them to be sacred. 
Such being the case, it certainly is not my purpose n-^w to- write 
what may be called a life of Thackeray. In this preliminary chapter 



8 THACKERAY. 

I will give such incidents and anecdotes of his life as will tell the 
reader perhaps all about him that a reader is entitled to ask- I 
will tell how he became an author, and will say how first he worked 
and struggled, and then how he worked and prospered, and be- 
came a household word in English literature ; how, in this way, 
he passed through that course of mingled failure and success 
which, though the literary aspirant may suffer, is probably 
better both for the writer and for the writings than unclouded 
early glory. The suffering, no doubt, is acute, and a touch of 
melancholy, perhaps of indignation, may be given to words which 
have been written while the heart has been too full of its own 
wrongs ; but this is better than the continued note of triumph, 
which is still heard in the final voices of the spoilt child of litera- 
ture, even when "they are losing their music. Then I will tell how 
Thackeray died, early indeed, but still having done a good hfe's 
work. Something of his manner, something of his appearance I 
can say, something perhaps of his condition of mind ; because for 
some years he was known to me. But of the continual intercourse 
of himself with the world, and of himself with his own works, I 
can tell little, because no record of his life has been made public. 

William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Calcutta, on July 
i8, 1811. His father was Richmond Thackeray, son of W. M. 
Thackeray of Hadley, near Barnet, in Middlesex. A relation of 
his, of the same name, a Rev. Mr. Thackeray, I knew well as rector 
of Hadley, many years afterwards. Him I believe to have been a 
second cousin of our Thackeray, but I think they had never met 
each other. Another cousin was Provost of Kings at Cambridge, 
fifty years ago, as Cambridge meji will remember. Clergymen of 
the family have been numerous in England during the century ; 
and there was one, a Rev. Elias Thackeray, whom I also knew in 
my youth, a dignitary, if I remember right, in the diocese of Meath. 
The Thackerays seem to have affected the Church ; but such was 
not at any period of his life the bias of our novelist's mind. 

His father and grandfather were Indian civil servants. His 
mother was Anne Becher, whose father was also in the Company's 
service. She married early in India, and was only nineteen when 
her son was bom. She was left a widow in r8i6, with only one 
child, and was married a few years afterwards to Major Henrjj 
Carrnichael Smyth, with whom Thackeray lived' on terms of affec- 
tionate intercourse till the major died. All who knew William 
Makepeace remember his mother well, a handsome, spare, gray- 
haired lady, whom Thackeray treated with a courtly deference as 
well as constant affection. There was, however, something of 
discrepancy between them as to matters of religion. Mrs. Car- 
michael Smyth was disposed to the somewhat austere observance 
of the evangelical section of the Church. Such, certainly, never 
became the case with her son. There was disagreement on the 
subject, and probably unhappiness at intervals, but never, I think 
quarrelling. Thackeray's house was his mother's home whenever 
she pleased it, and the home also of his stepfather. 



THACKERAY. ^ 

He was brought a child from India, and was sent early to the 
Charter House. Of his life and doings there his friend and school- 
fellow George Venables writes to me as follows : ..^. 

" My recollection of him, though fresh enough, does not furnish 
much material for biography. He came to school young — a pretty, 
gentle, and rather timid boy. I think his experience there was not 
generally pleasant. ' Though he had afterwards a scholarlike knowl- 
edge of Latin, he did not attain distinction in the school ; and I 
should think that the character of the head-master. Dr. Russel, 
which was vigorous, unsympathetic, and stern, though not severe, 
was uncongenial to his own. With the boys who knew him, Thack- 
eray was popular ; but he had no skill in games, and, I think, no 
taste for them. . . . He was already known by his faculty of mak- 
ing verses, chiefly parodies. I only remember one hne of one 
parody on a poem of L. E. L.'s, about ' Violets, dark blue violets ; ' 
Thackeray's version was ' Cabbages, bright green cabbages,' and 
we thought it very witty. He took part in a scheme, which came 
to nothing, for a school magazine, and he wrote verses for it, of 
which I only remember that they were good of their kind. When 
I knew him better, in later years, I thought I could recognize the 
sensitive nature which he had as a boy. . . . His change of retro- 
spective feeling about his school days was very characteristic. In 
his earher books he always spoke of the Charter House as Slaughter 
House and Smithfield. As he became famous and prosperous his 
memory softened, and Slaughter House was changed into Grey 
Friars, where Colonel Newcome ended his life." 

In February, 1829, when he was not as yet eighteen, Thack- 
erav went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was, I think, re- 
moved in 1830. It may be presumed, therefore, that his studies 
there were not very serviceable to him. There are few, if any, 
records left of his doings at the university — unless it be the fact 
that he did there commence the literary work of his life. The line 
about the cabbages, and the scheme of the school magazine, can 
hardly be said to have amounted even to a commencement. In 
182Q a little periodical was brought out at Cambridge, called The 
Snob, with an assurance on the title that it was not conducted by 
•members of the university. It is presumed that Thackeray took a 
hand in editing this. He certainly wrote, and published in the 
little paper, some burlesque lines on the subject which was given 
for the Chancellor's prize poem of the year. This was Tiinbuctoo^ 
and Tennyson was the victor on the occasion. There is some 
good fun in theiour first and four last lines of Thackeray's produc- 
tion. 

In Africa — a quarter of the world — 

Men's skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled; 

And somewhere there, unknown to public view, 

A mighty city lies, called Tinibuctoo. 



to THACKERAY. 

I see her tribes the hill of glory mount, 
And sell their sugars on their own account; 
While round her throne the prostrate nations come, 
>' Sue for her rice, and barter for her rum. 

« 

I cannot find in The Snob internal evidence of much literary 
merit beyond this. But then how many great writers have there 
been from whose early lucubrations no future literary excellence 
could be prognosticated ? 

There is something at any rate in the name of the publication 
which tells of work that did come. Thackeray's mind was at all 
times peculiarly exercised with a sense of snobbishness. His 
appreciation of the vice grew abnormally, so that at last he had a 
morbid horror of a snob — a morbid fear'lest this or the other man 
should turn snob on his hands. It is probable that the idea was 
taken from the early Snob at Cambridge, either from his own par- 
ticipation in the work or from his remembrance of it. The Snob 
lived, I think, but nine weeks, and was followed at an interval, in 
1830, by The Gowftsman, which lived to the seventeenth number, 
and at the opening of which Thackeray no doubt had a hand. It 
professed to be a continuation of The Snob. It contains a dedi'* 
cation to all proctors, which I should not be sorry to attribute 
to him. " To all Proctors, past, present, and future — 

Whose taste it is our privilege to follow, 
Whose virtue it is our duty to imitate, 
Whose presence it is our interest to avoid." 

There is, however, nothing beyond fancy to induce me to believe 
that Thackeray was the author of the dedication, and I do not 
know that there is any evidence to show that he was connected 
with The Snob beyond the writing of Timbuctoo. 

In 1830 he left Cambridge, and went to Weimar either in that 
year or in 1831. Between Weimar and Paris he spent some por- 
tion of his earlier years, while his family — his mother, that is, and 
his stepfather — were living in Devonshire. It was then the purport 
of his. life to become an artist, and he studied drawing at Paris, 
affecting especially Bonnington, the young English artist who had 
himself painted at Paris, and who had died in 1828, He never 
learned to draw — perhaps never could have learned. That he was 
idle, and did not do his best, we may take for granted. He was 
always idle, and only on some occasions, when the spirit moved 
him thoroughly, did he do his best even in after-life. But with 
drawing — or rather without it — he did wonderfully well even when 
he did his worst. He did illustrate his own books, and ever3'one 
knows how incorrect were his delineations. But as illustrations 
they were excellent. How often have I wished that characters of 
my own creating might be sketched as faultily, if with the same 
appreciation of the intended purpose. Let anyone look at the 
*' plates," as they are called in Vanity Fair, and compare each 
with the scenes and the characters intended to be displayed, and 



THACKERAY. II 

there see whether the artiste — if we may call him so — has not man- 
aged to convey in the picture the exact feeling which he has de- 
scribed in the text. I have a little sketch of his, in wliich a cannon- 
ball is supposed to have just carried off the head of an aide-de- 
camp — messenger I had perhaps better say, lest I might affront 
military feelings — who is kneeling on the field of battle and deliver- 
ing a despatch to Marlborough on horseback. The graceful ease 
with which the duke receives the message though the messenger's 
head be gone, and the soldier-like precision with which the head- 
less hero finishes his last effort of military obedience, may not 
have been portrayed with well-drawn figures, but no finished illus- 
tration ever told its story better. Dickens has informed us that 
he first met Thackeray in 1835, on which occasion the young artist 
aspirant, looking no doubt after profitable employment, " proposed 
to become the illustrator of my earliest book." It is singular 
that such should have been the first interview between the two 
great novelists. We may presume that the offer was rejected. 

In 1832, Thackeray came of age, and inherited his fortune — as 
to which various stories have been told. It seems to have amounted 
to about five hundred a year, and to have passed through his hands 
in a year or two, interest and principal. It has been told of him 
that it was all taken away from him at cards, but such was not the 
truth. Some went in an Indian bank in which he invested it. A 
portion was lost at cards. But with some of it— the larger part, as 
I think — he endeavoured, in concert with his stepfather, to float a 
newspaper, which failed. There seem to have been two newspapers 
in which he was so concerned, The National Standard and The 
Constitiitional. On tlie latter he was engaged with his stepfather, 
and in carrying that on he lost the last of his money. The Na- 
tomal Standard had been running for some weeks when Thack- 
eray joined it, and lost his money in it. It ran only for little more 
than twelve months, and then, the money having gone, the periodi- 
cal came to an end. I know no road to fortune more tempting to 
a young man, or one that with more certainty leads to ruin. Thack- 
eray, who in a way more or less correct, often refers in his writ- 
ings, if not to the incidents, at any rate to the remembrances of 
his ow'n life, tells us much of the story of this newspaper in Lovel 
the Widower. " They are welcome," says the bachelor, " to make 
merry at my charges in respect of a certain bargain which I made 
on coming to London, and in which, had I been Moses Primrose 
purchasing green spectacles, I could scarcely have been more 
taken in. My Jenkinson was an old college acquaintance, whom I 
was idiot enough to imagine a respectable man. The fellow had a 
very smooth tongue and sleek sanctified exterior. He was rather a 
popular preacher, and used to cry a good deal in the pulpit. He 
and a queer wine-merchant and bill discounter, Sherrick by name, 
had somehow got possession of that neat little literary paper, The 
Museum, which perhaps you remember, and this eligible literary 
property ray friend Honeyman, with his wheedling tongue, induced 
me to purchase." Here is the history of Thackeray's money, told 



12 THACKERAY. 

by himself plainly enough, but with no intention on his part of nar- 
rating an incident in his own life to the public. But the drollery 
of the circumstances, his own mingled folly and young ambition, 
struck him as being worth narration, and the more forcibly as he 
remembered all the ins and outs of his own reflections at the time 
— how he had meant to enchant the world, and make his fortune. 
There was literary capital in it of which he could make use after so 
many years. Then he tells us of this ambition, and of the folly of 
it; and at the same time puts forward the excuses to be made for 
it. "I daresay I gave myself airs as editor of that confounded 
Museum, and proposed to educate the public taste, to diffuse mor- 
ality and sound literature throughout the nation, and to pocket a 
liberal salary in return for my services. I daresay I printed my 
own sonnets, my own tragedy, my own verses. ... I daresay I 
wrote satirical articles. ... I daresay I made a gaby of myself to 
the world. Pray, my good friend, hast thou never done likewise ? 
If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise 
man." Thackeray was quite aware of his early weaknesses, and 
in the maturity of life knew well that he had not been precociously 
wise. He delighted so to tell his friends, and he delighted also to 
tell the public, not meaning that any but an inner circle should 
know that he was speaking of himself. But the story now is plain 
to all who can read.* 

It was thus that he lost his money ; and then, not having pros- 
pered very well with his drawing lessons in Paris or elsewhere, he 
was fain to take up literature as a profession. It is a business 
which has its allurements. It requires no capital, no special edu- 
cation, no training, and may be taken up at any time without a 
moment's delay. If a man can command a table, a chair, a pen, 
paper, and ink, he can commence his trade as literary man. It is 
thus that aspirants generally do commence it. A man may or may 
not have another employment to back him, or means of his own ; 
or — as was the case with Thackeray, when, after his first misadven- 
ture, he had to look about him for the means of living — he may 
have nothing but his intellect and his friends. Bat the idea comes 
to the man that as he has the pen and ink, and time on his hand, 
why should he not write and make money 1 

It is an idea that comes to very many men and women, old as 
well as young — to many thousands who at last are crushed by it, 
of whom the world knows nothing. A man can make the attempt 
though he has not a coat fit to go out into the street with ; or a 
woman, though she be almost in rags. There is no apprenticeship 
wanted. Indeed, there is no room for such apprenticeship. It is 
an art which no one teaches ; there is no professor who, in a 
dozen lessons, even pretends to show the aspirant how to write a 
book or an article. If you would be a watchmaker, you must learn ; 

* The report that he had lost all hisimoney and was goingto live by painting in Paris, 

was still prevalent in London in 1836. Macready, on the 27th April of that year, says in 

his Diary : "At Garrick Club, where I dined and saw the papers. Met Thackeray, who 

has spent all his fortune, and is now about to settle in Paris, I believe as an artist." But 

' at this time he was, in truth, turning to literature as a profession. 



THACKERAY, 13 

or a lawyer, a cook, or even a housemaid. Before you can clean a 
horse you must go into the stable, and begin at the beginning. 
Even the cab-driving tiro must sit for awhile on the box, and learn 
something of the streets, before he can ply for a fare. But the 
literary beginner rushes at once at the top rung of his ladder— as 
though a youth, having made up his mind to be a clergyman, should 
demand without preliminary steps, to be appointed Bishop of Lon- ': 
don. That he should be able to read and write is presumed, and 
that only. So much may be presumed of everyone, and nothing 
more is wanted. 

In truth nothing more is wanted— except those inner lights as 
to which so many men Hve and die without having learned whether 
they possess them or not. Practice, industry, study of literature, 
cultivation of taste, and the rest, will of course lend their aid, will 
probably be necessary before high excellence is attained. But the 
instances are not to seek— are at the fingers of us all — in which the 
first uninstructed effort has succeeded. A boy, almost, or perhaps 
an old woman, has sat down and the book has come, and the world 
has read it, and the booksellers have been civil and have written 
their cheques. When all trades, all professions, all seats at offices, 
all employments at which a crust can be earned, are so crowded 
that a young man knows not where to look for the means of live- 
lihood.is there not an attraction in this which to the self confident 
must be almost invincible 1 The booksellers are courteous and 
write their cheques, but that is not half the whole ? Monstrari^ 
digito ! That is obtained. The happy aspirant is written of in 
newspapers, or, perhaps, better still, he writes of others. When 
the barrister of forty-five has hardly got a name beyond Chan- 
cery Lane, this glorious young scribe, with the first down on his 
lips, has printed his novel and been talked about. 

The temptation is irresistible, and thousands fall into it. How 
is a man to know that he is not the lucky one or the gifted one ? 
There is the table, and there the pen and ink. Among the unfor- 
tunate, he who fails altogether and from the first start is not the 
most unfortunate. A short period of life is wasted, and a sharp 
pang is endured. Then the disappointed one is relegated to the 
condition of life which he would otherwise have filled a little ear- 
lier. He has been wounded, but not killed, or even maimed. But 
he who has a little success, who succeeds in earning a few halcyon, 
but ah ! so dangerous guineas, is drawn into a trade from which 
he will hardly escape till he be driven from it, if he come out 
alive, by sheer hunger. He hangs on till the guineas become 
crowns and shillings — till some sad record of his life, made when 
he applies for chanty, declares that he has worked hard for the 
last year or two, and has earned less than a policeman in the 
streets or a porter at a railway. It is to that that he is brought by 
applying himself to a business which requires only a table and 
chair, with pen, ink, and paper ! It is to that which he is brought 
by venturing to believe that he has been gifted with powers oi 
imagination, creation, and expression. 



,4 THACKERAY. 

The young man who makes the attempt knows that he must 
run the chance. He is well aware that nine must fail where one 
will make his running good. So much as that does reach his ears 
and recommends itself to his common-sense. But why should it 
not be he as well as another ? There is always some lucky one 
winning the prize. And this prize when it has been won is so 
well worth the winning ! He can endure starvation — so he tells 
himself — as well as another. He will try. But yet he knows that 
he has but one chance out of ten in his favour, and it is only in 
his happier moments that he flatters himself that that remains to 
him. Then there falls upon him — in the midst of that labour which 
for its success especially requires that a man's heart shall be light, 
and that he be always at his best — doubt and despair. If there 
be no chance, of what use is his labor ? 

Were it not better done as others use, 
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 

and amuse himself after that fashion 't Thus the very industry 
which alone could give him a chance is discarded. It is so that 
the young man feels who, with some slight belief in himself and 
with many doubts, sits down to commence the literary labor by 
which he hopes to live. 

So it was, no doubt, with Thackeray. Such were his hopes and 
his fears — with a resolution of which we can well understand that 
it should have waned at times, of earning his bread, if he did not 
make his fortune, in the world of literature. One has not to look 
far for evidence of the condition I have described— -that it was so, 
Amaryllis and all. How or when he made his very first attempt 
in London, I have not learned ; but he had not probably spent his 
money without forming " press " acquaintances, and had thus 
formed an aperture for the thin end of the wedge. He wrote for 
The Consiitutional, of which he was part proprietor, beginning 
his work for that paper as a correspondent from Paris. For awhile 
he was connected with The Times newspaper, though his work 
there did not, I think, amount to much. His first regular employ- 
ment was on Eraser's Magazine^ when Mr. Eraser's shop was in 
Regent Street, when Oliver Yorke was the presumed editor, and 
among contributors, Carlyle was one of the most notable. I im- 
agine that the battle of life was difficult enough with him even 
after he had become one of the leading props of that magazine. 
All that he wrote was not taken, and all that was taken was not 
approved. In 1837-38, the History of Sa?nuel Titmarsh and the 
Great Hoggarty Diaw ond a.ppea.red in the magazine. The Greai 
Hoggarty Diamond is now known to all readers of Thackeray's 
works. It is not my purpose to speak specially of it here, except 
to assert that it has been thought to be a great success. When it 
was being brought out, the author told a friend of his — and of 
mine — that it was not much thought of at Fraser's, and that he 
had been called upon to shorten it. That is an incident disagree- 



THACKERAY. j. 

able in its nature to any literary gentleman, and likely to be spe- 
cially so when he knows that his provision of bread, certainly of 
improved bread and butter, is at stake. The man who thus dark- 
ens his literary brow with the frown of disapproval, has at his dis- 
posal all the loaves and all the fishes that are going. If the writer 
be successful, there will come a time when he will be above such 
frowns ; but, when that opinion went forth, Thackeray had not yet 
made his footing good, and the notice to him respecting it must 
have been very bitter. It was in writing this Hoggarty Diainottd 
that Thackeray first invented the name of Michael Antrelo Tit- 
marsh. Samuel Titmarsh was the writer, whereas Michael A ngelo 
was an intending illustrator. Thackeray's nose had been brolcen 
in a school fight, while he was quire a little boy, by another little 
boy, at the Charter House ; and there was probably some associa- 
tion intended to be jocose with the name of the great artist, whose 
nose was broken by his fellow-student Torrigiano, and who, as it 
happened, died exactly three centuries before Thackeray. 

I can understand all the disquietude of his heart when that 
w^arning, as to the too great length of his story, was given to him. 
He was not a man capable of feeling at any time quite assured in 
his position, and when that occurred he was very far from assu- 
rance. I think that at no time did he doubt the sufiiciency of his 
own mental qualification for the work he had taken in hand ; but 
he doubted all else. He doubted the appreciation of the world ; 
he doubted his fitness for turning his intellect to valuable account ; 
he doubted his physical capacity — dreading his own lack of in- 
dustry ; he doubted his luck; he doubted the continual absence 
of some of those misfortunes on which the works of literary men 
are shipwrecked. Though he was aware of his own power, he 
always, to the last, was afraid that his own deficiences should be 
too strong against him. It was his nature to be idle — to put off 
his work — and then to be angry with himself for putting it off. 
Ginger was hot in the mouth with him, and all the allurements of 
the world were strong upon him. To find on Monday morning an 
excuse why he should not on Monday do Monday's work was, at 
the time, an inexpressible relief to him, but had become a d^ep 
regret — almost a remorse — before the Monday was over. To such 
a one it was not given to believe in himself with that sturdy rock- 
bound foundation which we see to have belonged to some men 
from the earliest struggles of their career. To him, then, must 
have come an inexpressible pang when he was told that his story 
must be curtailed. 

Who else would have told such a story of himself to the first 
acquaintance he chanced to meet ? Of Thackeray it might be 
predicted that he certainly wound do so. No little would of the 
kind ever came to him but what he disclosed it at once. "They 
have only bought so many of my new book." " Have you seen 
the abuse of my last number .'"' " What am I to turn my hand 
to "i They are getting tired of my novels." "They don't read it," 
he said to me of Esmond. " So you don't mean to publish my 



1 6 THACKERAY. 

work?" he said once to a publisher in an open company. Other 
men keep their b'ttle troubles to themselves. I have heard even 
of authors Avho have declared how all the publishers were running 
after their books ; I have heard some discourse freely of their 
fourth and fifth editions ; I have known an author to boast of his 
thousands sold in this country, and his tens of thousands in Amer- 
ica ; but I never heard anyone else declare that no one would read 
his ^//;^-(^'(2?z^?7r<?, and that the world was becoming tired of him. 
It was he who said, when he was fifty, that a man past fifty should 
never write a novel. 

And yet, as I have said, he was from an early age fully con- 
scious of his own abilit}-. That he was so is to be seen in the 
handling of many of his early v/orks — in Barry Lyndon., for in- 
stance, and the Memoirs of Mr. C. Ja7nes Yellowplush. The 
sound is too certain for doubt of that kind. But he had not then, 
nor did he ever achieve tliat assurance of public favour which 
makes a man confident that his work will be successful. During 
the years of which we are now speaking Thackeray was a literary 
Bohemian in this sense — that he never regarded his own status as 
certain. While performing much of the best of his life's work he 
was not sure of his market, not certain of his readers, his pub- 
lishers, or his price ; nor was he certain of himself. 

It is impossible not to form some contrast between him and Dick- 
ens as to this period of liis life — a comparison not as to their literary 
merits, but literary position. Dickens was one year his junior in age, 
and at this time, viz., 1837-38, had reached almost the zenith of his 
reputation. Pickwick had been published, and Oliver Twist and 
Nicholas Nickleby were being published. All the world was talk- 
ing about the young author who was assuming his position with a con- 
fidence in his own powers which was fully justified both by his 
present and future success. It was manifest that he could make 
not only his own fortune, but that of his publishers, and that he was a 
literary hero bound to be worshipped by all literary grades of men, 
down to the ^'devils" of the printing-office. All that time Thack- 
eray, the older man, was still doubting, still hesitating, still strug- 
gling. Everyone then had accepted the name of Charles Dickens. 
That of William Thackeray was hardly known beyond the circle 
of those who are careful to make themselves acquainted with such 
matters. It was then the custom, more generally than it is at pres- 
ent, to maintain anonymous writing in magazines. Now, if any- 
thing of special merit be brought out, the name of the author, if 
not published, is known. It was much less so at the period in 
question ; and as the world of readers began to be acquainted 
with Jeames Yellowplush, Catherine Hayes, and other heroes 
and heroines, the name of the author had to be inquired for. I 
remember myself, when I was already well acquainted with the 
immortal Jeames, asking who was the writer. The works of 
Charles Dickens were at that time as well known to be his, and as 
widely read in England, as those almost of Shakespeare. 

It will be said, of course, that this came from the earlier popu- 



THACKERAY. 17 

larity of Dickens. That is of course ; but why should it have been 
so ? They had begun to make their effort much at the same 
time ; and if there was any advantage in point of position as they 
commenced, it was with Thackeray, It might be said that the 
genius of the one was brighter than that of the other, or, at any rate, 
that it was more precocious. But after-judgment has, I think, not 
declared either of the suggestions to be true. I will make no 
comparison between two such rivals, who were so distinctly differ- 
ent from each, and each of whom, within so very short a period, 
has come to stand on a pedestal so high— the two exalted to so 
equal a vocation. And if Dickens showed the best of his power 
early in life, so did Thackeray the best of his intellect. In no dis- 
play of mental force did he rise above Barry Lyndon, I hardly 
know how the teller of a narrative shall hope to mount in simply 
intellectual faculty above the effort there made. In what, then, 
was the difference ? Why was Dickens already a great man when 
Thackeray was still a literary Bohemian ? 

The answer is to be found not in the extent or in the nature of 
the genius of either man, but in the condition of mind — which in- 
deed may be read plainly in their works by those who have eyes to 
see. The one was steadfast, industrious, full of purpose, never 
doubting of himself, always putting his best foot foremost and 
standing firmly on ft when he got it there ; with no inward trepid- 
ation, with no moments in which he was half inclined to think that 
this race was not for his winning, this goal not to be reached by 
his struggles. The sympathy of friends was good to him, but he 
could have done without it. The good opinion which he had of 
himself was never shaken by adverse criticism ; and the criticism 
on the other side, by which it was exalted, canie from the enumer- 
ation of the number of copies sold. He was a firm, reliant man, 
very little prone to change, who, when he had discovered the 
nature of his own talent, knew how to do the very best with it. 

It may almost be said that Thackeray was the very opposite of 
this. Unsteadfast, idle, changeable of purpose, aware of his own 
intellect but not trusting it, no man ever failed more generally 
than he to put his best foot foremost. Full as his works are of 
pathos, full of humour, full of love and charity, tending, as they 
always do, to truth and honour, and manly worth and womanly 
modesty, exce^ing, as they seem to me to do, most other written 
precepts that I know, they always seem to lack something that 
might have been there. There is a touch of vagueness which in- 
dicates that his pen was not firm while he was using it. He seems, 
to me to have been dreaming ever of some high flight, and then to 
have told himself, with a half-broken heart, that it was beyond his 
power to soar up into those bright regions. I can fancy, as the 
sheets went from him every day. he told himself, in regard to every 
sheet, that it was a failure. Dickens was quite sure of his sheets. 

" I have got to make it shorter ! " Then he would put his 
hands in his pockets, and stretch himself, and straighten the lines 
of his face, over which a smile would come, as though this intimation 



1$ THACKERAY. 

from his editor were the best joke in the world ; and he would 
walk away, with his heart bleeding, and every nerve in an agony. 
There are none of us who want to have much of his work short- 
ened now. 

In 1837 Thackeray married Isabella, daughter of Colonel 
Matthew Shawe, and from this union there came three daughters, 
Anne, Jane, and Harriet. The name of the eldest, now Mrs. 
Richmond Ritchie, who has followed so closely in her father's 
steps, is a household word to the world of novel readers; the 
second died as a child; the younger lived to marry Leslie Stephen, 
who is too well known for me to say more than that he wrote, the 
other day, the little volume on Dr. Johnson in this series ; but she, 
too, has now followed her father. Of Thackeray's married life what 
need be said shall be contained in a very few words. It was griev- 
ously unhappy : but the misery of it came from God, and was in no 
wise due to human fault. She became ill, and her mind failed her. 
There was a period during which he would not believe that her illness 
was more than illness, and then he clung to her and waited on her 
with an assiduity of affection which only made his task the more 
painful to him. At last it became evident that she should live in 
the companionship of some one with whom her life might be al- 
together quiet, and she has since been domiciled with a lady with 
whom she has been happy. Thus she was, after but a few years 
of married hfe, taken away from him, and he became, as it were, a 
widower till the end of his days. "yL^ 

At this period, and indeed for some years after his marriage, 
his chief literary dependence was on Fraser^s Magazine. He 
wrote also at this time in the New Monthly Magazine. In 1840 
he brought out his Pa? is Sketch Book, as to which he tells us, by 
a notice printed with the first edition, that half of the sketches had 
already been published in various periodicals. Here he used the 
name Michael Angelo Titmarsh, as he did also with the Journey 
from Cornhill to Cairo. Dickens had called himself Boz, and 
clung to the name with persistency as long as the public would 
permit it. Thackeray's affection for assumed names was more 
intermittent, though I doubt whether he used his own name al- 
together till it appeared on the title-page of Vanity Fair. About 
this time began his connection with Punch, in which much of his 
best work appeared. Looking back at our old friend as he used to 
come out from week to week at this time, we can hardly boast 
that we used to recognize how good the literary pabulum was that 
was then given for our consumption. We have to admit that the 
ordinary reader, as the ordinary picture-seer, requires to be guided 
by a name. We are moved to absolute admiration by a Raphael 
or a Hobbema, but hardly till we have learned the name of the 
painter, or, at any rate, the manner of his painting. I am not sure 
that all lovers of poetry would recognise a Lycidas coming from 
some hitherto unknown Milton. Gradually the good picture or 
the fine poem makes its way into the minds of a slowly discerning 
public. Punchy no doubt, became very popular, owing, perhaps, 



THACKERAY. 



19 



more to Leech, its artist, than to any other single person. Grad- 
ually the world of readers began to know that there was a spe- 
ciality of humour to be found in its pages — fun and sense, satire 
and good-humour, compressed together in small literary morsels 
as the nature of its columns required. Gradually the name of 
Thackeray as one of the band of brethren was buzzed about, and 
gradually became known as that of the chief of the literary brothers. 
But during the years in which he did much for Piitich, say from 
1843 to 1853, he was still struggling to make good his footing in 
literature. They knew him well in the Punch office, and no doubt 
the amount and regularity of the cheques from Messrs. Bradbury 
and Evans, the then and still owners of that happy periodical, 
made him aware that he had found for himself a satisfactory career. 
In "a good day for himself, the journal, and the world, Thackeray 
found Punch.'''' This was said by his old friend Shirley Brooks, 
who himself lived to be editor of the paper and died in harness, 
and was said most truly^ Punch was more congenial to him, and 
no doubt more generous, than Erase?'. There was still something 
of the literary Bohemian about him, but not as it had been before. 
He was still unfixed, looking out for some higher career, not al- 
together satisfied to be no more than one of an anonymous band 
of brothers, even though the brothers were the brothers of Pujich. 
We can only imagine what were his thoughts as to himself and 
that other man, who was then known as the great novehst of the 
day — of a rivalry with whom he was certainly conscious. Ptinch 
was very much to him, but was not quite enough. That must have 
been very clear to himself as he meditated the beginning of Vanity 
Fair. 

Of the contributions to the periodical, the best known now are 
The Snob Papers and The Ballads of Policejnan X. But they 
were very numerous. Of Thackeray as a poet, or maker of verses, 
I will say a few works in a chapter which will be devoted to his 
own so-called ballads. Here it seems only necessary to remark 
that there was not apparently any time in his career at which he 
began to think seriously of appearing before the public as a poet. 
Such was the intention early in their career with many of our best 
known prose writers, with' Milton, and Goldsmith, and Samuel 
Johnson, with Scott, Macaulay, and more lately with Matthew 
Arnold ; writers of verse and prose who ultimately prevailed some 
in one direction, and others in the other. Milton and Goldsmith 
have been known best as poets, Johnson and Macaulay as writer.^ 
of prose. But with all of them there has been a distinct effort in 
each art. Thackeray seems to have tumbled into versification by 
accident; writing it as amateurs do, a little now and again for his 
own delectation, and to catch the tastes of partial friends. The 
reader feels that Thackeray would not have begun to print his 
verses unless the opportunity of doing so had been broucfht in his 
way by his doings in prose. 'And yet he had begun to write verses 
when he was very young; — at Cambridge, as we have seen, when 
he contributed more to the fame of Timbuctoo than I think even 



20 THACKERAY. 

Tennyson has done — and in his early years at Paris. Here again, 
though he must have felt the strength of his own mingled humour 
and pathos, he always struck with an uncertain note till he had 
gathered strength and confidence by popularity. Good as they 
generally were, his verses were accidents, written not as a writer 
writes who claims to be a poet, but as though they might have been 
the relaxations of a doctor or a barrister. 

And so they were. When Thackeray first settled himself in 
London, to make his living among the magazines and newpapers, I 
do not imagine that he counted much on his poetic powers. He 
describes it all in his own dialogue between the pen and the album. 

•' Since he," says the pen, speaking of its master, Thackeray ; 

*' Since he my faithful service did engage, 
To follow him through his queer pilgrimage, 
I've drawn and written many a line and page. 

** Caricatures I scribbled have, and rhymes, 
And dinner-cards, and picture pantomimes. 
And many little children's books at times. 

" I've writ the foolish fancy of his brain ; 
The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain 
The idle word that he'd wish back again. 

" I've helped him to pen many a line for bread.'* 

It was thus he thought of his vi^ork. There had been carica- 
tures, and rhymes, and many little children's books ; and then the 
lines written for his bread, which, except that they were written for 
Pitnch, was hardly undertaken with a more serious purpose. In 
all of it there was ample seriousness, had he known it himself. 
What a tale of the restlessness, of the ambition, of the glory, of the 
misfortunes of a great country is given in the ballads of Peter the 
French drummer ! Of that brain so full of fancy the pen had lightly 
written all the fancies. He did not know it when he was doing so, 
but with that word fancy he has described exactly the gift with 
which his brain was specially endowed- If a writer be accurate, 
or sonorous, or witty, or simply pathetic, he may, I think, gauge his 
own powers. He may do so after experience with something of 
certainty. But fancy is a gift which the owner of it cannot meas- 
ure, and the power of which, when he is using it, he cannot him- 
self understand. There is the same lambent flarae flickering over 
everything he did, even the dinner-cards and the picture panto- 
mimes. He did not in the least know what he put into those 
things. So it was with his verses. It was only by degrees, when 
he was told of it by others, that he found that they too were of 
infinite value to him in his profession, 

The Irish Sketch Book came out in 1843, ^11 which he used, but 
Dnly half used, the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. He dedi- 
cates it to Charles Lever, and in signino; the dedication ^ave his 



THACKERAY ' 21 

own name. " Laying aside," he says, "for a moment the travelling 
title of Mr. Titraarsh, let me acknowledge these favours m my own 
name, and subscribe myself, &c., &c., W. M. Thackeray." So hv 
gradually fell into the declaration of his own identity. In 1844 he 
made his journey to Turkey and Egypt — Krom Cornhill to Grand 
Cairo^ as he called it, still using the old nom de piiinie, but again 
signing the dedication with his own name. It was nowmadeto the 
captain of the vessel in which he encountered that famous white 
squall, in describing which he Jias shown the ^wonderful power he 
had over words. 

In 1846 was commenced, in numbers, the novel which first made 
his name well known to the world. This was Vanity Fai)\ a work 
to which it is evident that he devoted all his mind. Up to this 
time his writings had consisted of short contributions, chiefly of 
sketches, each intended to stand by itself in the periodical to which 
it was sent. Barry Lyndon had hitherto been the longest ; but 
that and Catherine Hays and the Hoggarty Diamotid, though 
stories continued through various numbers, had not yet reached the 
dignity — or at any rate the length— of a three-volume novel. But of 
late novels had grown to be much longer than those of the old well- 
known measure. Dickens had stretched his to nearly double the 
length, and had published them in twenty numbers. The attempt 
had caught the public taste, and had been pre-eminently successful. 
The nature of the tale as originated by him was altogether unlike 
that to which the readers of modern novels had been used. No 
plot, with an arranged catastrophe or dSnoumeni^ was necessary. 
Some untying of the various knots of the narrative no doubt were 
expedient, but these were of the simplest kind, done with the view 
of giving an end to that which might otherwise be endless. The 
adventures of a Pickwick or a Nickleby required very little of a plot, 
and this mode of telling a story, which might be continued on 
through any number of pages, as long as the characters were 
interesting, met with approval. Thackeray, who had never depended 
much on his plot in the shorter tales which he had hitherto told, 
determined to adopt the same form in his first great work but with 
these changes : — That as the central character with Dickens had 
always been made beautiful with unnatural virtue — for who was. 
ever so unselfish as Pickwick, so manly and modest as AHcholas, or 
so good a boy as Oliver? — so should his centre of interest be in 
every respect abnormally bad. 

As to Thackeray's reason for this — or rather as to that condition 
of mind which brought about this result — I will say something in a 
final chapter, in which I will endeavor to describe the nature and 
effect of his work generally. Here it will be necessary only to 
declare that, such was the choice he now made of a sul)ject in his 
first attempt to rise out of a world of small literary contributions, 
into the more assured position of the author of a work of impor- 
tance. We are aware that the monthly nurses of periodical litera- 
ture did not at first smile on the effort. The proprietors of maga- 
zines did not see their way to undertake Vanity Fair ^diXid. the 



22 THACKERAY. 

publishers are said to have generally looked shy upon it. At last 
it was brought out in numbers — twenty-four numbers instead of 
twenty, as with those by Dickens — under the guardian hands of 
Messrs. Bradbury and Evans. This was completed in 1848, and 
then it was that, at the age of thirty-seven, Thackeray first achieved 
for himself a name and reputation through the country. Betore 
this he had been known at Fraser^s and at the Punch office. He 
was known at the Garrick Club, and had become individually 
popular among literary men in London. He had made many fast 
friends, and had been, as it were, found out by persons of distinc- 
tion. But Jones, and Smith, and Robinson, in Liverpool, Manchester, 
and Birmingham, did not know him as they knew Dickens, Carlyle, 
Tennyson, and Macaulay — not as they knew Landseer, or Stans- 
feld, or Turner ; not as they knew Macready, Charles Kean, or 
Miss Faucit. In that year, 1848, his name became common in the 
memoirs of the time. On the 5th of June I find him dining with 
Macready, to meet Sir J. Wilson, Panizzi, Landseer, and others. 
A few days afterwards Macready dined v/ith him. " Dined with 
Thackeray, met the Gordons, Kenyons, Procters, Reeve, Villiers, 
Evans, Stansfeld, and saw Mrs. Sartoris and S. C. Dance, White, 
H. Goldsmid, in the evening." Again : " Dined with Forster, 
having called and taken up Brookfield, met Rintoul, Kenyon, Procter, 
Kinglake, Alfred Tennyson, Thackeray." Macready was very 
accurate in jotting down the names of those he entertained, who 
entertained him, or were entertained with him. Vaiiity Fair was 
coming out, and Thackeray, had become one of the personages in 
literary society. In the January number of 1848 the Edinburgh 
Review had an article on Thackeray's works generally as they were 
then known. It purports to combine the lirsh Sketch Book^ the 
yourney from CornlMl to Grand Cairo, and Vanity Fair as far as it 
had then gone ; but it does in truth deal chiefly with the literary 
merits of the latter. I will quote a passage from the article, as 
proving in regard to Thackeray's work an opinion which was well 
founded, and as telling the story of his life as far as it was then 
known : 

"Full many a valuable truth," says the reviewer, "has been 
sent undulating through the air by men who have lived and died 
unknown. At this moment the rising generation are supplied with 
the best of their mental aliment by writers whose names are a dead 
letter to the mass ; and among the most remarkable of these is 
Michael Angelo Titmarsh, alias William Makepeace Thackeray, 
author of the Irish Sketch Book, oi A yourney from Cornhill to 
Grand, Cairo, of yeames's Diary, of The Snob Papers in Punchy of 
V^anity Fair, &c., &c. 

" Mr. Thackeray is now about thirty-seven ye s of age, of a 
good family, and originally intended for the bar. He kept seven or 
eight terms at Cambridge, but left the university without taking a 
degree, with the view of becoming an artist; and we well remem- 
ber, ten or twelve years ago, finding him day after day engaged in 
copying pictures in the Louvre, in order to qualify himself for his 



THACKERAY. 23 

intended profession. It may be doubted, however, whether any 
degree of assiduity would have enabled him to excel in the money- 
making branches, for his talent was altogether of the Hogarth kind, 
and was principally remarkable in the pen-and-ink sketches of 
character and situation, which he dashed off for the amusement of 
his friends. At the end of two or three years of desultory appli- 
cation he gave up the notion of becoming a painter, and took to 
literature. He set up and edited with marked ability a weekly 
journal, on the plan of The AthencBtun and Literary Gazette, but 
was unable to compete successfully with such long-established 
rivals. He then became a regular man of letters— that is, he wrote 
for respectable magazines and newspapers, until the attention at- 
tracted to his contributions in Fraser's Magazine and Punch em- 
boldened him to start on his own account, and risk an independent 
publication." Then follows a eulogistic and, as I think, a correct 
criticism on the book as far as it had gone. There are a few re- 
marks perhaps a little less eulogistic as to some of his minor writ- 
ings, The Snob Papers in particular ; and at the end there is a state- 
ment with which I think we shall all now agree: "A writer with 
such a pen and pencil as Mr. Thackeray's is an acquisition of real 
and high value in our literature." 

The reviewer has done his work in a tone friendly to the author, 
whom he knew* — as indeed it may be said that this little book will 
be written with the same feehng — but the public has already rec- 
ognised the truth of the review generally. There can be no doubt 
that Thackeray, though he had hitherto been but a contributor of 
anonymous pieces to periodicals — to what is generally considered 
as merely the ephemeral literature of the month — had already be- 
come effective on the tastes and morals of readers. Affectation of 
finery ; the vulgarity which apes good breeding but never ap- 
proaches it ; dishonest gambling, whether with dice or with railway 
shares ; and that low taste for literary excitement which is gratified 
by mysterious murders and Old Bailey executions, had already 
received condign punishment from Yellowplush, Titmarsh, Fitz- 
boodle, and Ikey Solomon. Under all those names Thackeray had, 
plied his trade as a satirist. Though the truths, as the reviewer 
said, had been merely sent undulating through the air, they had al- 
ready become effective. 

Thackeray had now become a personage — one of the recognised 
stars of the literary heaven of the day. It was an honour to know 
him ; and we may well believe that the givers of dinners were 
proud to have him among their guests. He had opened his oyster 
with his pen — an achievement which he cannot be said to have ac- 
complished until Vanity Fair had come out. In inquiring about 
him from those who survive him, and knew him well in those days, 
I always hear the same account. " If I could only tell you the im- 
promptu lines which fell from him!" "If I had only kept the 

* The article was written by Abraham Hayward, who is still with us, and was no 
doubt instigated by a desire to assist Thackeray in his struggle upwards, in which it suo 
ceeded. 



24 



THACKERAY. 



drawings from his pen, which used to be chucked al)Out as though 
they were worth nothing!" " If I could only remember the droll- 
eries ! " Had they been kept, there might now be many volumes 
of these sketches, as to which the reviewer says that their talent 
was *' altogether of the Hogarth kind." Could there be any kind 
more valuable? Like Hogarth, he could always make his picture 
tell his story ; though, unlike Hogarth, he had not learned to draw. 
I have had sent to me for my inspection an album of drawings and 
letters, which, in the course of twenty years, from 1829 to 1849, 
were despatched from Thackeray to his old friend Edward Fitz- 
gerald. Looking at the wit displayed in the drawings, I feel in- 
clined to say that had he persisted he would have been a second 
Hogarth. There is a series of ballet scenes, in which " Flore et 
Zephyr " are the two chief performers, which for expression and 
drollery exceed anything that I know of the kind. The set in this 
book are lithographs, which were published, but I do not remember 
to have seen them elsewhere. There are still among us many who 
knew him well — Edward Fitzgerald and George Venables, James 
Spedding and Kinglake, Mrs. Procter, — the widow of Barry Corn- 
wall, who loved him well — and Monckton Milnes, as he used 
to be, whose touching lines written just after Thackeray's death 
will close this volume, Frederick Pollock and Frank Fladgate, 
John Blackwood and William Russell — and they all tell the 
same story. Though he so rarely talked, as good talkers do, and 
was averse to sit down to work, there were always falling from his 
mouth and pen those little pearls. Among the friends who had 
been kindest and dearest to him in the days of his strugglings he 
once mentioned three to me — Matthew Higgins, or Jacob Omnium, 
as he was more popularly called ; William Stirling, who became Sir 
William Maxwell ; and Russell Sturgis, who is now the senior 
partner in the great house of Barings. Alas, only the last of these 
three is left among us ! Thackeray was a man of no great power 
of conversation. I doubt whether he ever shone in what is called 
general society. He was not a man to be valuable at a dinner-table 
as a good talker. It was when there were but two or three together 
that he was happy himself and made others happy; and then it 
would rather be from some special piece of drollery that the joy of 
the moment would come, than from the discussion of ordinary 
topics. After so many years his old friends remember the fag-ends 
of the doggerel lines which used to drop from him without any 
effort on all occasions of jollity. And though he could be very sad 
— laden with melancholy, as I think must have been the case with 
him always — the feeling of fun would quickly come to him, and the 
queer rhymes would be poured out as plentifully as the sketches 
were made. Here is a contribution which I find hanging in the 
memory of an old friend, the serious nature of whose literary 
labours would certainly have driven such hues from his mind, had 
they not at the time caught fast hold of him : 

" In the romantic little town of Highbury 
, My father kept a circulatin' library ; 



THACKERAY, 25 

He followed in his youth that man immortal, who 

Conquered the Frenchmen on the plains of Waterloo. 

Mamma was an inhabitant of Drogheda, 

Ver)' good she was to darn and to embroider. 

In the famous island of Jamaica, 

For thirty years I've been a sugar-baker ; 

And here I sit, the Muses' 'appy vot'ry, 

A cultivatin' every kind of po'try." 
• 
There may, perhaps, have been a mistake in a line, but the 
poem has been handed down with fair correctness over a period of 
forty years. He was always versifying. He once owed me five 
pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence, his share of a dinner 
bill at Richmond. He sent me a check for the amount in rhyme, 
giving the proper financial document on the second half of a sheet 
of note-paper. I gave the poem away as an autograph, and now for- 
get the lines. This was all trifling, the reader will say. No doubt 
Thackeray was always trifling, and yet always serious. In attempt- 
ing to understand his character it is necessary for you to beaf 
within your own mind the idea that he was always, within his own 
bosom, encountering melancholy with buffoonery, and meanness 
with satire. The very spirit of burlesque dwelt within him — a spirit 
which does not see .the grand the less because of the travesties 
which it is always engendering. 

In his youthful — all but boyish — days in London, he delighted 
to "put himself up" at the Bedford, in Covent Garden. Then, 
in his early married days, he lived in Albion Street, and from thence 
went to Great Coram Street, till his household there was broken up 
by his wife's illness. He afterwards took lodgings in St. James's 
Chambers, and then a house in Young Street, Kensington. Here 
he lived from 1847, when he was achieving his great triumph with 
Vanity Fair, down to 1853, when he removed to a house which he 
bought in Onslow Square. In Young Street there had come 
to lodge opposite to him an Irish gentleman, who, on the part of 
his injured country, felt very angry with Thackeray. The Irish 
Sketch Book had not been complimentary, nor were the descriptions 
which Thackeray had given generally of Irishmen ; and there was 
extant an absurd idea that in his abominable heroine Catherine 
Hayes he had alluded to Miss Catherine Hayes, the Irish singer. 
Word was taken to Thackeray that this Irishman intended to come 
across the street and avenge his country on the calumniator's person, 
Thackeray immediately called upon the gentleman, and it was said 
that the visit was pleasant to both parties. There certainly was no 
blood shed. 

He had now succeeded — in 1848 — in makingfor himself a stand- 
ing as a man of letters, and an income. What was the extent of 
his income I have no means of saying ; nor is it a subject on which, 
as I think, inquiry should be made. But he was not satisfied with 
his position. He felt it to be precarious, and he was always think- 
ing of what he owed to his two girls. That arbitrium popularis 
aurce on which he depended for his daily bread was not regarded 



£6 THACKERAY, 

by him with the confidence which it deserved. He did not, prob- 
ably, know how firm was the hold he had obtained of the public 
ear. At any rate he was anxious, and endeavoured to secure for 
himself a permanent income in the public service. He had become 
by this time acquainted, probably intimate, with the Marquis of 
Clanricarde, who was then Postmaster-General. In 1848 there 
fell a vacancy in the situation of Assistant-Secretary at the General 
, Post-Office, and Lord Clanricarde either offered it to him or prom- 
ised to give it to him. The Postmaster-Gene*ral had the disposal of 
the place, but was not altogether free from control in the matter. 
When he made known his purpose at the Post-Office, he was met by 
an assurance from the officer next under him that the thing could 
not be done. The services were wanted of a man who had had ex- 
perience in the Post-Office ; and, moreover, it was necessary that the 
feelings of other gentlemen should be consulted. Men who have 
been serving in an office many years do not like to see even a man 
of genius put over their heads. In fact, the ofi^ce would have been 
up in arms at such an injustice. Lord Clanricarde, who in a matter 
of patronage was not scrupulous, was still a good-natured man and 
amenable. He attempted to befriend his friend till he found that 
it was impossible, and then, with the best grace in the world, ac- 
cepted the official nominee that was offered to him. 

It may be said that had Thackeray succeeded in that attempt 
he would surely have ruined himself. No man can be fit for the 
management and performance of special work who has learned 
nothing of it before his thirty-seventh year; and no man could have 
been less so than Thackeray. There are men who, though they be 
not fit, are disposedfto learn their lesson and make themselves as 
fit as possible. Such cannot be said to have been the case with 
this man. For the special duties which he would have to perform, 
consisting to a great extent of the maintenance of discipline over 
a large body of men, training is required, and the service would 
have suffered for awhile under any untried elderly tiro. Another 
man might have put himself into harness. Thackeray never would 
have done so. The details of his work after the first month would 
have been inexpressibly wearisome to him. To have gone into 
the city, and to have remained there every day from eleven till five 
would have been all but impossible to him. He would not have 
done it. And then he would have been tormented by the feeling 
that he was taking the pay and not doing the work. There is a 
belief current, not confided to a few, that a man may be a Govern- 
ment Secretary with a generous salary and have nothing to do. 
The idea is something that remains to us from the old days of 
sinecure?. If there be now remaining places so pleasant, or gen- 
tlemen so happy, I do not know them. Thackeray's notion of his 
future duties was probably very vague. He would have repudiated 
the notion that he was looking for a sinecure, but no doubt con- 
sidered that the duties would be easy and light. It is not too much 
to assert, that he- who could drop his pearls as I have said above, 
throwing them wide cast without an effort, would have found his 



THACKERAY. 



27 



work as Assistant-Secretary at the General Post-Office to be alto* 
gether too much for him. And then no doubt it was his intention 
to join literature with the Civil Service. He had been taught to 
regard Civil Service as easy, and had counted upon himself as able 
to add it to his novels, and his work with his Pu7ich brethren, and 
to his contributions generally to the literature of the day. He might 
have done so, could he have risen at five, and have sat at his pri- 
vate desk for three hours before he began his official routine at the 
public one. A capability for grinding, an aptitude for continuous 
task work, a disposition to sit in one's chair as if fixed to it by 
cobbler's wax, will enable a man in the prime of life to go through 
the tedium of a second day's work every day ; but of all men 
Thackeray was the last to bear the wearisome perseverance of 
such a life. Some more or less continuous attendance at his office 
he must have given, and with it would have gone Punch and the 
novels, the ballads, the burlesques, the essays, the lectures, and the 
monthly papers full of mingled satire and tenderness, which have 
left to us that Thackeray which we could ill afford to lose out of 
the literature of the nineteenth century. And there would have 
remained to the Civil Service the memory of a disgraceful job. 

He did not, however, give up the idea of the Civil Service. In 
a letter to his American friend, Mr. Reed, dated 8th November, 
1854, he says : "The secretaryship of our Legation at Washington 
was vacant the other day, and I instantly asked for it ; but in the 
very kindest letter Lord Clarendon showed how the petition was 
impossible. First, the place was given aw^ay. Next, it would not 
be fair to appoint out of the service. But the first was an excel- 
lent reason — not a doubt of it." The validity of the second was 
probably not so apparent to him as it is to one who has himself 
waited long for promotion. " So if ever I come," he continues, 
"as I hope and trust to do this time next year, it must be in my 
own coat, and not the Queen's." Certainly in his own coat, and 
not in the Queen's, must Thackeray do anything by which he 
could mend his fortune or make his reputation. There never was 
a man less fit for the Queen's coat. 

Nevertheless he held strong ideas that much was due by the 
Queen's ministers to men of letters, and no doubt had his feelings 
of slighted merit, because no part of the debt due was paid to him. 
In 1850 he wrote a letter to The Morning Chronicle^ which has 
since been republished, in which he alludes to certain opinions 
which had been put forth in The Examiner. " I don't see," he says, 
" why men of letters should not very cheerfully coincide with Mr. 
Examiner in accepting all the honours, places, and prizes which they 
can get. The amount of such as will be awarded to them will not, 
we may be pretty sure, impoverish the country much ; and if it is 
the custom of the State to reward by money, or titles of honour, 
or stars and garters of any sort, individuals who do the country 
service — and if individuals are gratified at having ' Sir ' or ' My 
lord' appended to their names, or stars and ribbons hooked on to 
their coats and waistcoats, as men most undoubtedly are, and as 



28 THACKERAY. 

their wives, families, and relations are — there can be no reason 
why men of letters should not have the chance, as well as men of 
the robe or the sword ; or why, if honour and money are good for 
one profession, they should not be good for another. No man in 
o-ther callings thinks himself degraded by receiving a reward from 
his Government ; nor, surely, need the literary man be more squeam- 
ish about pensions,. and ribbons, and titles, than the ambassador, 
or general, or judge. Every European state but ours rewards its 
men of letters. The American Government gives them their full 
share of its small patronage ; and if Americans, why not English- 
men ? " 

In this a great subject is discussed which would be too long 
for these pages; but I think that there now exists a feeling that 
literature can herself, for herself, produce a rank as effective as 
any that a Queen's minister can bestow. Surely it would be a re- 
painting of the lily, an adding a flavour to the rose, a gilding of re- 
fined gold to create to-morrow a Lord Viscount Tennyson, a Baron 
Carlyle, or a Right Honourable Sir Robert Browning. And as for 
pay and pension, the less the i)etter of it for any profession, unless 
so far as it may be payment made for work done. Then the higher 
the better, in literature as in all other trades. It may be doubted 
even whether a special rank of its own be good for literature, such 
as that which is achieved by the happy possessors of the forty 
chairs of the Academy in France. Even though they had an an- 
gel to make the choice — which they have not — that angel would do 
more harm to the excluded than good to the selected. 

Pendennis, Esmond, and The Newcomes followed Vanity Fair 
— not very quickly indeed, always at an interval of two years — in 
1850, 1852, and 1854. As I purpose to devote a separate short 
chapter, or part of a chapter, to each of these, I need say nothing 
here of their special merits or demerits. Esjnond \\21s brought out 
as a whole. The others appeared in numbers. " He lisped in" 
numbers, for the numbers came." It is a mode of pronunciation 
in literature by no means very articulate, but easy of production 
and lucrative. But though easy it is seductive, and leads to idle- 
ness. An author by means of it can raise money and reputation 
on his book before he has written it, and when the pang of parturi- 
tion is over in regard to one part, he feels himself entitled to a 
period of ease because the amount required for the next division 
will occupy him only half the«month. This to Thackeray was so 
alluring that the entirety of the final half was not always given to 
the task. His self-reproaches and bemoanings when sometimes 
the day for reappearing would come terribly nigh, while yet the 
necessary amount of copy was far from being ready, were often 
very ludicrous and very sad — ludicrous because he never told of 
his distress without adding to it something of ridicule which wa.s 
irresistible, and sad because those who loved him best were aware 
that physical suffering had already fallen upon him, and that he 
was deterred by illness from the exercise of continuous energy. I 
piyself did not know him till after the time now in question. Mjr 



THACKERAY. 29 

acquaintance with him was quite late in his life. But he has told 
me somethino; of it, and I have heard from those who lived with 
him how continual were his sufferings. In 1854, he says in one of 
his letters to Mr. Reed — the only private letters of his which I 
know to have been published : " I am to-day just out of bed after 
another, about the dozenth, severe fit of spasms which 1 have had 
this year. My book would have been written but for them." His 
work was always going on, but though not fuller of matter — that 
would have been almost impossible — would have been better in 
manner had he been delayed neither by suffering nor by that palsy- 
ing of the energies which suffering produces. 

This ought to have been the happiest period of his life, and 
should have been very happy. He had become fairly easy in his 
circumstances. He had succeeded in his work, and had mkde for 
himself a great name. He was fond of popularity, and especially 
anxious to be loved by a small circle of friends. These good things 
he had thoroughly achieved. Immediately after the publication of 
Vanity Fair he stood high among the literary heroes of his coun- 
try, and had endeared himself especially to a special knot of 
friends. His face and figure, his six feet four in height, with his 
flowing hair, already nearly gray, and his broken nose, his broad 
forehead and ample chest, encountered everywhere either love or 
respect; and his daughters to him were all the world — the bairns 
of whom he says, at the end of the White Squall ballad; 

* I thought, as day was breaking, 
My little girls were waking, 
And smiling, and making 
A prayer at home for me." 

Nothing could have been more tender or endearing than his rela- 
tions with his children. But still there was a skeleton in his cup- 
board — or rather two skeletons. His home had been broken up 
by his wife's malady, and his own health was shattered. When he 
was writing Pendennis, in 1849, he had a severe fever, and then 
those spasms came, of which four or five years afterwards he 
wrote to Mr. Reed. His home, as a home should be, was never 
restored to him — or his health. Just at that period of life at which 
a man generally makes a happ}'- exchange in taking his wife's 
drawing-room in lieu of the smoking-room of his club, and assumes 
those domestic ways of living which are becoming and pleasant for 
matured years, that drawing-room and those domestic ways were 
closed against him. The children were then no more than babies, 
as far as society was concerned — things to kiss and play with, and 
make a home happy if they could only have had their mother with 
them. I have no doubt there were those who thought that Thack- 
eray was very jolly under his adversity. Jolly he was. It was the 
manner of the man to be so — if that continual playfulness which 
was natural to him, lying ovor a- melanclioly which was as con- 
tinual, be compatible with jollity. He laughed, and ate, and drank, 
and threw his pearls about with miraculous profusion. But I 
fancy that he was far from happy. I remember once, when I was 



30 THACKERAY. 

young, receiving advice as to the manner in whicli I had better 
spend my evenings ; I was told that I ought to go heme, drink tea, 
and read good books. It was excellent advice, but I found that 
the reading of good books in solitude was not an occupation con- 
genial to me. It was so, I take it, with Thackerav. He did not 
like his lonely drawing-room, and went back to his life among the 
clubs by no means with contentment. 

In 1853, Thackeray having then his own two girls to provide 
for, added a third to his family, and adopted Amy Crowe, the 
daughter of an old friend, and sister of the well-known artist now 
among us. How it came to pass that she wanted a home, or that 
this special home suited her, it would be unnecessary here to tell 
even if I knew. But that he did give a home to this young lady, 
making her in all respects the same as another daughter, should be 
told of him. He was a man who liked to broaden his back for the 
support of others, and to make himself easy under such burdens 
In 1862, she married a Thackeray cousin, a young officer with the 
Victoria Cross, Edward Thackeray, and went out to India, where 
she died. 

In 1854, the year in which The Newcomes came out, Thackeray 
had broken his close alliance with Ptmch. In December of that 
year there appeared from his pen an article in The Quarterly on 
John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character. It is a rambling dis- 
course on picture-illustration in general, full of interest, but hardly 
good as a criticism — a portion of literary work for which he was 
not specially fitted. In it he tells us how Richard Doyle, the 
artist, had given up his work for Punch, not having been able, as a 
Roman Catholic, to endure the skits which, at that time, were ap- 
pearing in one number after another against what was then called 
Papal aggression. The reviewer — Thackeray himself — then tells 
us of the secession of himself from the board of brethren, •' An- 
other member of Mr. Punch's cabinet, the biographer of feames^ 
the author of The Snob Papers, resigned his functions, on account 
of Mr. Punch's assaults upon the present Emperor of the French 
nation, whose anger Jeames thought it was unpatriotic to arouse." 
How hard it must be for Cabinets to agree ! This man or that is 
sure to have some pet conviction of his own, and the better the 
man the stronger the conviction ! Then the reviewer went on in 
favour of the artist of whom he was specially speaking, making a 
comparison which must at the time have been odious enough to 
some of the brethren. "• There can be no blinking the fact that in 
Mr. Punch's Cabinet John Leech is the right-hand man. Fancy a 
number of Pwtch without Leech's pictures ! What would you 
give for it?'' Then he breaks out into strong admiration of that 
one friend — perhaps with a little disregard as to the feelings of 
other friends.* This Critical Review, if it may properly be so 

* For a week there existed at the Pttnck office a c;rudp;e against 'I'hackeray in refei- 
ence to this awkwird question : " Wliat would you give for your Pni:ch vvithont John 
Leech?" Then he asked the confraternity to dinner — more Thackerayano — and the 
confraternity cam;. Who can doubt but they were very jolly over the little blunder? 
For years afterwards Thackeray was a guest at the well-known Puttch dinueri though h« 
vas DO longer one of the contributors. 



THACKERA Y. 



3^ 



called — at any rate it is so named as now published — is to be 
found in our author's collected works, in the same volume with 
Catherine. It is there preceded by another, from The Westmin- 
ster Review, written fourteen years earlier, on The Genius of 
Cruikshank. This contains a descriptive catalogue of Cruik- 
shank's works up to that period, and is interesting, from the 
piquant style in which it is written. I fancy that these two are the 
only efforts of the kind which he made — -and in both he dealt with 
the two great caricaturists of his time, he himself being, in the 
imaginative part of a caricaturist's work, equal in power to either 
of them. 

We now come to a phase of Thackeray's life in which he 
achieved a remarkable success, attributable rather to his fame as 
a writer than to any particular excellence in the art which he then 
exercised. He took upoif himself the functions of a lecturer, being 
moved to do so by a hope that he might thus provide a sum of 
money for the future sustenance of his children. No doubt he had 
been advised to this course, though I do not know from whom speci- 
ally the advice may have come. Dickens had already considered 
the subject, but had not yet consented to read in pubHc for money 
on his own account. John Forster, writing of the year 1846, says 
of Dickens and the then only thought-of exercise of a new profes- 
sion : '■ I continued to oppose, for reasons to be stated in their 
place, that which he had set his heart upon too strongly to abandon, 
and which I still can wish he had preferred to surrender with all 
that seemed to be its enormous gain." And again he says, speak- 
ing of a proposition which had been made to Dickens from the 
town of Bradford : " At first this was entertained, but was aban- 
doned, with some reluctance, upon the argument that to become 
publicly a reader must alter, without improving, his position 
publicly as a writer, and that it was a change to be justified only 
when the higher calling should have failed of the old success." 
The meaning of this was that the money to be made would be 
sweet, but that the descent to a profession which was considered 
to be lower than that of literature itself would carry with it some- 
thing that was bitter. It was as though one who had sat on the 
Woolsack as Lord Chancellor should raise the question whether, 
for the sake of the income attached to it, he might, without dis- 
grace, occupy a seat on a lower bench ; as though an architect 
should consider with himself the propriety of making his fortune 
as a contractor ; or the head of a college lower his dignity, while 
he increased his finances, by taking pupils. When such discus- 
sions arise, money generally carries the day — and should do so. 
When convinced that money may be earned without disgrace, we 
ought to allow money to carry the day. When we talk of sordid 
gain and filthy lucre, we are generally hypocrites. If gains be 
sordid and lucre filthy, where is the priest, the lawyer, the doctor, 
or the man of literature, who does not wish for dirty liands ? An 
income, and the power of putting by something for old age, some- 
thing for those who are to come after, is the wholesome and ac- 



32 



THACKERAY. 



krxowledged desire of all professional men. Thackeray having 
children, and being gifted with no power of making his money go 
very far, was anxious enough on the subject. We may say now, 
that hacl he confined himseii to his pen, he would not have wanted 
while he lived, but would have left but little behind him. That he 
was anxious we have seen, by his attempts to subsidise his literary 
gains by a Government office. I cannot but think that had he un- 
dertaken public duties for which he was ill qualified, and received 
a salary which he could hardly have earned, he would have done 
less for his fame than by reading to the pubHc. Whether he did 
that well or ill, he did it well enough for the money. The people 
who heard him, and who paid for their seats, were satisfied with 
their bargain — as they were also in the case of Dickens ; and I 
venture to say that in becoming publicly a reader, neither did 
Dickens or Thackeray " alter his position as a writer," and " that it 
was a change to be justified," though the success of the old calling 
had in no degree waned. What Thackeray did enabled him to 
leave a comfortable income for his children, and one earned hon- 
estly, with the full approval of the world around him. 

Having saturated his mind with the literature of Queen Anne's 
time — not probably, in the first instance, as a preparation for Es- 
mond^ but in such a way as to induce him to create an Esmond — 
he took the authors whom he knew so well as the subject for his 
first series of lectures. He wrote The English Humourists of 
the Eighteeftth Centitry in 1851, while he must have been at work 
on Esmond, and first delivered the course at Willis's Rooms in 
that year. He afterwards went with these through many of our 
provincial towns, and then carried them to the United States, 
where he delivered them to large audiences in the wmter of 1852 
and 1853. Some few words as to the merits of the composition I 
will endeavour to say in another place. I myself never heard him 
lecture, and can therefore give no opinion of the performance. 
That which I have heard from others has been very various. It 
is, I think, certain that he had none of those wonderful gifts of 
elocution which made it a pleasure to listen to Dickens, whatever 
he read or whatever he said ; nor had he that power of application 
by using which his rival taught himself with accuracy the exact 
effect to be given to every word. The rendering of a piece by 
Dickens was composed as an oratorio is composed, and was then 
studied. And the piece was all given by memory, without any 
looking at the notes or words. There was nothing of this with 
Thackeray. But the thing read was in itself of great interest to 
educated people. The words were given clearly, with sufficient 
intonation for easy understanding, so that they who were willing 
to hear something from him felt on hearing that they had received 
full value for their money. At any rate, the lectures were success-' 
ful. The money was made — and was kept. 

He came from his first trip to America to his new house in 
Onslow Square, and then published The Newcomes. This, too, 
was one of his great works, as to which I shall have to speak here* 



THACKERAY, ^iZ 

after. Then, having enjoyed his success in the first attempt to 
lecture, he prepared a second series, He never essayed the kind 
of reading which with Dickens became so wonderfully popular. 
Dickens recited portions from his well-known works. Thackeray 
wrote his lectures expressly for the purpose. They have since 
been added to his otli^r literature, but they were prepared as 
lectures. The second series were The Four Georges. In a 
lucrative point of view they were even more successful than the 
first, the sum of money realised in the United States having been 
considerable. In England they were less popular, even if better 
attended, the subject chosen having been distasteful to many. 
There arose the question whether too much freedom had not been 
taken with an office which, though it be no longer considered to 
be founded on divine right, is still as sacred as can be anything 
that is human. If there is to remain among us a sovereign, that 
sovereign, even though divested of political power, should be 
endowed with all that personal respect can give. If we wish our- 
selves to be high, we should treat that which is over us as high. 
And this should not depend altogether on personal character, 
though we know — as we have reason to know — how much may be 
added to the firmness of the feeling by personal merit. The re- 
spect of which we speak should, in the strongest degree, be a pos- 
session of the immediate occupant, and will naturally become dim 
— or perhaps be exaggerated — in regard to the past, as history or 
fable may tell of them. No one need hesitate to speak his mind 
of King John, let him be ever so strong a stickler for the privileges 
of majesty. But there are degrees of distance, and the throne of 
which we wish to preserve the dignity seems to be assailed when 
unmeasured, evil is said of one who has sat there within our own 
memory. There would seem to each of us to be a personal af- 
front were a departed relative delineated with all those faults by 
which we must own that even our near relatives have been made 
imperfect. It is a general conviction as to this which so frequently 
turns the biography of those recently dead into mere eulogy. The 
fictitious charity which is enjoined by Xhe de mortiiis nil nisi bonmn 
banislies truth. The feeling of which I speak almost leads me at 
this moment to put down my pen. And, if so much be due to all 
subjects, is less due to a sovereign .'' 

Considerations such as these diminished, I think, the popularity 
of Thackeray's second series of lectures ; or, rather, not their pop- 
ularity, but the estimation in which they were held. On this head 
he defended himself more than -once very gallantly, and had a 
great deal to say on his side of the question. " Suppose, for ex- 
ample, in America — Philadelphia or in New York — that I had 
spoken about George IV. in terms of praise and affected reverence, 
do you believe they would have hailed his name with cheers, or 
have heard it with anything of respect?" And again: "We 
degrade our own honour and the sovereign's by unduly and unjustly 
praising him ; and the mere slaverer and flatterer is one who comes 

3 . 



34 



THACKERAY. 



forward, as it were, with flash notes, and pays with false coin 
bis tribute to Csesar. I don't disguise that I feel somehow on my 
trial here for loyalty — for honest English feeling." This was said 
by Thackeray at a dinner at Edinburgh, in 1857, and shows how 
the matter rested on his mind. Thackeray's loyalty was no doubt 
-true enough, but was mixed with but little of reverence. He was 
one who revered modesty and innocence rather than power, against 
which he had in the bottom of his heart something of republican 
tendency. His leaning was no doubt of the more manly kind. But 
in what he said at Edinburgh he hardly hit the nail on the head. 
No one had suggested that he should have said good things of 
a king which he did not believe to be true. The question was 
whether it may not be well sometimes for us to hold our tongues. 
An American literary man, here in England, would not lecture on 
the morals of Hamilton, on the manners of General Jackson, on 
the general amenities of President Johnson. 

In 1857 Thackeray stood for Oxford, in the Liberal interest, in 
opposition to Mr. Cardwell. He had been induced to do this by 
his old friend Charles Neate, who himself twice sat for Oxford, 
and died now not many months since. He polled 1,017 votes, 
against 1,070 by Mr. Cardwell ; and was thus again saved by his 
good fortune from attempting to fill a situation in which he would 
not have shone. There are, no doubt, many to whom a seat in 
Parliament comes almost as the birthright of a well-born and well- 
to-do English gentleman. They go there with no more idea of 
shining than they do when they are elected to a first-class club- 
hardly with more idea of being useful. It is the thing to do, and 
the House of Commons is the place where a man ought to be — 
for a certain number of hours. Such men neither succeed nor fail, 
for nothing is expected of them. From such a one as Thackeray 
something would have been expected, which would not have been 
forthcoming. He was too desultory for regular work — full of 
thought, but too vague for practical questions. He could not have 
endured to sit for two or three hours at a time with his hat over 
his eyes, pretending to listen, as is the duty of a good legislator. 
He was a man intolerant of tedium, and in the best of his time 
impatient of slow v^^ork. Nor, though his liberal feelings were 
very strong, were his political convictions definite or accurate. 
He was a man who mentally drank in much, feeding his fancy 
hourly with what he saw, what he heard, what he read, and then 
pouring it all out with an immense power of amplification. But it 
would liave been impossible for him to study and bring home to 
himself the various points of a complicated bill with a hundred and 
fifty clauses. In becoming a man of letters, and taking that branch 
of letters which fell to him, he obtained the special place that was 
fitted for him. He was a round peg in a round hole. There was 
no other hole which he would have fitted nearly so well. But he 
had his moment of political ambition, like others — and paid a thoth 
sand pounds for his attempt. 



THACKERAY. 



35 



J'l 1857 the first number of The Virginians appeared ; and the 
last — the twenty-fourth — in October, 1859. This novel, as all my 
readers are aware, is a continuance of Esmond, and will be spoken 
of in its proper place. He was then forty-eight years old, very gray, 
with much of age upon him, which had come from suffering — age 
shown by dislike of activity and by an old man's way of thinking 
about many things — speaking as though the world were all behind 
him instead of before ; but still with a stalwart outward bearing, 
very erect in his gait, and a countenance peculiarly expressive and 
capable of much dignity. I speak of his personal appearance at 
this time, because it was then only that I became acquainted with 
him. In 1859 he undertook the last great work of his life, the 
editorship of The Comhill Magazine, a periodical set on foot by 
Mr. George Smith, of the house of Smith and Elder, with an amount 
of energy greater than has generally been bestowed upon such en- 
terprises. It will be well remembered still how much Tlie Comhill 
was talked about and thought of before it first appeared, and how 
much of that thinking and talking was due to the fact that Mr. 
Thackeray was to edit it. Macjnillan's, I think, was the first of the 
shilling magazines, having preceded The Comhill by a month, and 
it would ill become me, who have been a humble servant to each of 
them, to giveto either any preference. But it must be acknowledged 
that a great deal was expected from The Comhill, and 1 think itwill 
be confessed that it was the general opinion that a great deal was 
given by it. Thackeray had become big enough to give a special eclat 
to any literary exploit to which he attached himself. Since the days 
of The Constitutiofial he had fought his way up the ladder, and 
knew how to take his stand there with an assurance of success. 
When it became known to the world of readers that a new magazine 
was to appear under Thackeray's editorship, the world of readers 
was quite sure that there would be a large sale. Of the first num- 
ber over one hundred and ten thousand were sold, and of the sec- 
ond and third over one hundred thousand. It is in the nature of 
such things that the sale should fall off when the novelty is over. 
People believe that a new delight has come, a new joy for ever, and 
then find that the joy is not quite so perfect or enduring as they 
had expected. But the commencement of such enterprises may be 
taken as a measure of what will follow. The magazine, either by 
Thackeray's name or by its intrinsic merits — probably by both — 
achieved a great success. My acquaintance with him grew from 
my having been one of his staff from the first. 

About two months before theaopening day I wrote to him sug- 
gesting that he should accept from me a series of four short stories 
on which I was engaged. I got back a long letter in Vv^hich he said 
nothing about my short stories, but asking whether I could go to 
work at once and let him have a long novel, so that it might begin 
with the first number. At the same time I heard from the pub- 
lisher, who suggested some interesting little details as to honorarium 
The little details were very interesting, but absolutely no time was 
allowed to me. It was required that the first portion of my book 



36 



THACKERAY. 



should be in the printer's hands within a month. Now it was my 
theory — and ever since this occurrence has been my practice — to 
see the end of my own work before the public should see the com- 
mencement.* If I did this thing I must not only abandon ray the- 
ory, but instantly contrive a story, or begin to write it before it was 
contrived. That was what I did, urged by the interesting nature 
of the details. A novelist cannot always at the spar of the moment 
make his plot and create his characters who shall, with an arranged 
sequence of events, live with a certain degree of eventful decorum, 
through that portion of their lives which is to be portrayed. I hes- 
itated, but allowed myself to be allured to what I felt to be wrong, 
much dreading the event. How seldom is it that theories stand 
the wear and tear of practice ! I will not say that the story which 
came was good, but it was received with greater favor than any I 
had written before or have written since. I tlvink that almost any- 
thing would have been then accepted coming under Thackeray's 
editorship. 

I was astonished that worjc should be required in such haste, 
knowing that much preparation had been made, and that the service 
of almost any English novelist might have been obtained if asked 
for in due time. It was my readiness that was needed, rather than 
any other gift! The riddle was read to me after a time. Thack- 
eray had himself intended to begin with one of his own great novels, 
but had put it off till it was too late. Lovelthe Widower -^^js, com- 
menced at the same time with my own story, but Lovelthe Widower 
was not substantial enough to appear as the principal joint at the 
banquet. Though your guests will undoubtedly dine off the little 
delicacies you provide for them, there must be a heavy saddle of 
mutton among the viands prepared. I was the saddle of mutton, 
Thackeray having omitted to get his joint down to the fire in time 
enough. My fitness lay in my capacity for quick roasting. 

It may be interesting to give a list of the contributors to the 
first number. My novel called Framley Parsonage C2.mQ first. At 
this banquet the saddle of mutton was served before the delicacies. 
Then there was a paper by Sir John Bowring on The Chiiiese and 
Outer Barbarians. The commencing number of Lovel the Wid- 
ower followed. George Lewes came next with his first chapters 
of St7idies in Ani^narUfe. Then there was Father Prout's Inaugu- 
ration Ode, dedicated to the author of Vanity /^^zV— which should 
have led the way. I need hardly sav that Father Prout was the 
Rev. F. Mahonv. Then followed Our Volunteers, by Sir John 
Burgoyne ; A Man of Letters of the Last Generation, by Thornton 
Hunt ; The Search for Sir John Franklin, from a private journal 
of an officer of the Fox, now Sir Allen Young :and The first Morn- 
ing of i860, by Mrs. Archer Clive. The number was concluded 
by the first of those Roundabout Papers by Thackeray himself, 

* T had begun an Irish story and ha^f finished it, which would reach just the required 
len-th Would that do ? I asked. I was civilly told that my Irish story would no doubt 
be cliarmin-, but was not quite tlic thing that was wanted. Could I not begin a new one 
—English— and if possible about clergymen ? The details were so uiteresUng that had • 
couple of archbishops been demanded, I should have produced them. 



THACKERAY. ^^ 

which became so delightful a portion of the literature of The Co}-n- 
hill Magazine. 

It would be out of my power, and hardly interesting, to give an 
entire list of those who wrote for The Co7nhill under Thackeray's 
editorial direction. But I may name a few, to show how strong 
was the support which he received. Those who contributed to the 
first number I have named. Among those who followed were 
Alfred Tennyson, Jacob Omnium, Lord Houghton, William Russell^ 
Mrs. Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Browning, Robert Bell, George Augus- 
tus Sala, Mrs. Gaskell, Jam.es Hinton, Mary Howitt, John Kaye, 
Charles Lever, Frederick Locker, Laurence Oliphant, John Ruskin, 
Fitzjames Stephen, T. A. Trollope, Henry Thompson, Herman 
Merivale, Adelaide Proctor, Matthew Arnold, the present Lord 
Lytton, and Miss Thackeray, now Mrs. Ritchie. Thackeray con- 
tinued the editorship for two years and four months, nam.ely, up to 
April, 1862; but, as all readers will remember, he continued to 
write for it till he died, the day before Christmas Day, in 1863. 
His last contribution was, I think, a paper written for and published 
in the November number, called '"'■ Strange to say 07t Club Paper" 
in which he vindicated Lord Clyde from the accusation of having 
taken the club stationery home with him. It was not a great sub- 
ject, for no one could or did believe that the Field-Marshal had 
been guilty of any meanness ; but the handling of it has made it 
interesting, and his indignation has made it beautiful. 

The magazine was a great success, but justice compels me to 
say that Thackeray was not a good editor. As he would have been 
an indifferent civil servant, an indifferent member of Parliament, so 
was he perfunctory as an editor. It has sometimes been thought 
well to select a popular literary man as an editor ; first, because his 
name will attract, and tlien with an idea that he who can write well 
himself will be a competent judge of the writings of others. The 
first may sell a magazine, but will hardly make it good ; and the 
second will not avail much, unless the editor so situated be patient 
enough to read what is sent to him. Of a magazine editor it is re- 
quired that he should be patient, scrupulous, judicious, but above 
all things hard-hearted. I think it may be doubted whether Thack- 
eray did bring himself to read the basketfuls of manuscripts with 
which he was deluged, but he probably did, sooner or later, read 
the touching little private notes by which they were accompanied 
—the heartrending appeals, in which he was told that if this or the 
other little article could be accepted and paid for, a starving family 
might be saved from starvation for a month. He tells us how he 
felt on receiving such letters in one of his Roundabout Papers^ 
which he calls " Thorns in the cushion:' *'How am I to know," 
he says—" thougli to be s.ure I begin to know now — as I take the 
letters off the tray, which of those envelopes contains a real bona 
fide letter, and which a thorn ? One of the best invitations this 
year I mistook for a thorn letter, and kept it without opening." 
Then he gives the sample of a thofn letter. It is from a governess 
with a poem, and with a prayer for insertion and payment " We 



38 



THACKERAY. 



have known better days, sir. I have a sick and widowed mother 
to maintain, and little brothers and sisters who look to me." He 
could not stand this, and the money would be sent, out of his own 
pocket, though the poem might be — postponed, till happily it should 
be lost. 

From such material a good editor could not be made. Nor, in 
truth, do I think that he did much of the editorial work. I had 
once made an arrangement, not with Thackeray, but with the pro- 
prietors, as to some little story. The story was sent back to me 
by Thackeray — rejected. Virgiiiibiis puerisque / That was the 
gist of his objection. There was a project in a gentleman's mind 
— as told in my story — to run away with a married woman ! Thack- 
eray's letter was very kind, very regretful — full of apology for such 
treatment to such a contributor. But — Virginibus puerisque ! I 
was quite sure that Thackeray had not taken the trouble to read 
the story himself. Some moral deputy had read it, and disapprov- 
ing no doubt properly, of the little project to which I have alluded, 
had incited the editor to use his authority. That Thackeray had 
suffered when he wrote it was easy to see, fearing that he was giv- 
ing pain to one he would fain have pleased. I wrote him a long 
letter in return, as full of drollery as I knew how to make it. lu 
four or five days there came a reply in the same spirit — boiling over 
with fun. He had kept my letter by him, not daring to open it — 
as he says that he did with that eligible invitation. At last he had 
given it to one of his girls to examine — to see whether the thorn 
■would be too sharp, whether I had turned upon him with reproaches. 
A man so susceptible, so prone to work by fits and starts, so un- 
methodical, could not have been a good editor. 

In 1862 he went into the new house which he had built for him- 
self at Palace Green. I remember well, while this was still being 
built, how his friends used to discuss his imprudence in building it. 
Though he had done well with himself, and had made and was 
making a large income, was he entitled to live in a house the rent 
of which could not be counted at less than from five hundred to six 
hundred pounds a year ? Before he had been there two years, he 
solved the question by dying — when the house was sold for two 
thousand pounds more than it had cost. He himself, in speaking 
of his project, was wont to declare that he was laying out his money 
!n the best way he could for the interest of his children ; and it 
turned out that he was right. 

In 1863 he died in the house which he had built, and at the 
period of his death was writing a new novel in numbers, called 
De?iis Duval. In The Cornhill, The Adventures of Philip had 
appeared. This new enterprise was destined for commencement 
on 1st Januar);-, 1864, ^.nd, though the writer was gone, it kept its 
promise, as far as it went. Three numbers, and what might prob- 
ably have been intended for half of a fourth, appeared. It may be 
seen, therefore, that he by no means held to my theory, that the 
author should see the end of hi^^work before the public sees the 
commencement. But neither did Dickens or Mrs. Gaskell,both of 



THACKERAY. 39 

whom died with stories not completed, which, when they died, were 
in the course of publication. All the evidence goes against the 
necessity of such precaution. Nevertheless, were I giving advice 
to a tiro in novel writing, I should recommend it. 

With the last chapter of Denis Duval was published in the 
magazine a set of notes on the book, taken for the most part 
from Thackeray's own papers, and showing how much collateral 
work he had given to the fabrication of his novel. No doubt 
in preparing other tales, especially Esmond, a very large amount 
of such collateral labour was found necessary. He was a man who 
did very much of such work, delighting to deal in little histori- 
cal incidents. They will be found in ahpost everything that he 
did, and I do not know that he was ever accused of gross mistakes. 
But I doubt whether on that account lie should be called a laborious 
man. He could go down to Winchelsea, when writing about the 
little town, to see in which way the streets lay, and to provide him- 
self with what we call local colouring. He could jot down the 
suggestions, as they came to his mind, of his future story. There 
was an irregularity in such work which was to his taste. His very 
notes would be dehghtful to read, partaking of the nature of pearls 
when prepared only for his own use. But he could not bring him- 
self to sit at his desk and do an allotted task day after day. He ac- 
complished what must be considered as quite a sufficient life's work. 
He had about twenty-five years for the purpose, and that which he 
has left is an ample produce for the time. Nevertheless he was a 
man of fits and starts, who, not having been in his early years 
drilled to method, never achieved it in his career. 

He died on the day before Christmas Day, as has been said 
above, very suddenly, in his bed, early in the morning, in the fifty- 
third year of his life. To those who saw him about in the world 
there seemed to be no reason why he should not continue his career 
for the next twenty years. But those who knew him were so well 
aware of his constant sufferings, that, though they expected no 
sudden catastrophe, they were hardly surprised when it came. His 
death was probably caused by those spasms of which he had com- 
plained ten years before, in his letter to Mr. Reed. On the last 
day but one of the year, a crowd of sorrowing friends stood over 
his grave as he was laid to rest in Kensal Green ; and, as quickly 
afterwards as it could be executed, a bust to his memory was put 
up in Westminster Abbey. It is a fine work of art, by Marochetti ; 
but, as a likeness, is, I think, less effective than that which was 
modelled, and then given to the Garrick Club, by Durham, and has 
lately been put into marble, and now stands in the upper vestibule 
of the club. Neither of them, in my opinion, gives so accurate an 
idea of the man as a statuette in bronze, by Boehm, of which two 
or three copies were made. One of them is in my possession. It 
has been alleged, in reference to this, that there is something of a 
caricature in the lengthiness of the figure, in the two hands thrust 
into the trousers pockets, and in the protrusion of the chin. But 
this feeling has originated in the general idea that any face, or any 



40 



THACKERAY. 



figure, not made by the artist more beautiful or more graceful than 
the original is an injustice. The face must be smoother, the pose 
of the body must be more dignified, the proportions more perfect, 
than in the person represented, or satisfaction is not felt. Mr. 
Boehm has certainly not flattered, but, as far as my eye can judge, 
he has given the figure of the man exactly as he used to stand be- 
fore us. 1 have a portrait of him in crayon, by Samuel Lawrence, 
as like, but hardly as natural. 

A little before his death Thackeray told me that he had then suc- 
ceeded in replacing the fortune which he had lost as a young man. 
He had, in fact, done better, for he left an income of seven hun- 
dred and fifty pounds behind him. 

It has been said of Thackeray that he was a cynic. This has 
been said so generally, that the charge against him has become pro- 
verbial. This, stated barely, leaves one or two impressions on the 
mind, or perhaps the two together — that this cynicism was natural 
to his character and came out in his life, or that it is the character- 
istic of his writings. Of the nature of his writings generally, I will 
speak in the last chapter of this little book. As to his personal 
character as a cynic, I must find room to quote the following first 
stanzas of the little poem which appeared to his memory in Punchy 
from the pen of Shirley Brooks : 

He was a cynic ! By his life all wrought 
Of generous acts, mikl words, and gentle ways , 

His heart wide open to all kindly thought, 

His hand so quick to give, his tongue to praise ! 

He was a cynic ! You might read it writ 

In that broad brow, crowned with its silver hair; 

In those blue eyes, with childlike candour lit, 
In that sweet smile his lips were wont to wear ! 

He was a cynic ! By the love that clung 
About him from his children, friends, and kin ; 

By the sharp pain light pen and gossip tongue 
Wrought in him, chafing the soft heart within 1 

The spirit and nature of the man have been caught here with 
absolute truth. A public man should of course be judged from his 
public work. If he wrote as a cynic — a point which I will not dis- 
cuss here — it may be fair that he who is to be known as a writer 
should be so called. But, as a man, I protest that it would be hard 
to find an individual farther removed from the character. Over and 
outside his fancy, which was the gift which made him so remark- 
•fible — a certain feminine softness was the most remarkable trait 
about him. To give some immediate pleasure was the great delight 
of his life — a sovereign to a schoolboy, gloves to a girl, a dinner to a 
man, a compliment to a woman. His charity was overflowing. His 
generosity excessive. I heard once a story of woe from a man who 
was the dear friend of both of us. The gentleman wanted a largQ 



THACKERAY. 



41 



sum of money instantly — something under two thousand pounds — > 
had no natural friends who could provide it, but must go utterly to 
the wall without it. Pondering over this sad condition of things 
just revealed to me, I met Thackeray between the two mounted he- 
roes at the Horse Guards, and told him the story. " Do you mean 
to say that I am to tind two thousand pounds ? " he said, angrily, 
with some expletives. I explained that I had not even suggested 
the doing of anything — only that we might discuss the matter. 
Then there came over his face a peculiar smile, and a wink in his 
eye, and he whispered his suggestion, as though half ashamed of 
bis meanness. "I'll go half," he said, "if anybody will do the 
rest." And he did go half, at a day or two's notice, though the 
gentleman was no more than simply a friend. I am glad to be able 
to add that the money was quickly repaid. I could tell various 
stories of the same kind, only that I lack space, and that they, if 
simply added one to the other, would lack interest. 

He was no cynic, but he was a satirist ; and could now and then 
be a satirist in conversation, hitting very hard when he did hit. 
When he was in America, he met at dinner a literary gentle- 
man of high character, middle-aged, and most dignified deport- 
ment. The gentleman was one whose character and acquirements 
stood very high — deservedly soT-but who in society, had that air 
of wrapping his toga around him, \vhich adds, or 'is supposed to 
add, many cubits to a man's height. But he had a broken nose. 
At dinner he talked much of the tender passion, and did so 
in a manner which stirred up Thackeray's feeling of the ridic- 
ulous. "What has the world come to," said Thackeray, out 
loud to the table, " when two broken-nosed old fogies like you 
and me sit talking about love to each other ! " The gentleman 
was astounded, and could only sit wrapping his toga in silent dis- 
may for the rest of the evening. Thackeray then, as at other sim- 
ilar times, had no idea of giving pain, but when he saw a foible he 
put his foot upon it, and tried to stamp it out. 

Such is my idea of the man whom many call a cynic, but whom 
I regard as one of the most soft-hearted of human beings, sweet as 
Charity itself, who went about the world dropping pearls, doing 
good, and never wilfully inflicting a wound. 



42 THACKERAY, 



CHAPTER IT. 

fraser's magazine and punch. 

How Thackeray commenced his connection with Fraser's Mage^ 
zine I am unable to say. We know how he had come to London with 
a view to a literary career, and that he had at one time made an 
attempt to earn his bread as a correspondent to a newspaper from 
Paris. It is probable that he became acquainted with the redoubt- 
able Oliver Yorke, otherwise Dr. Maginn, or some of his staff, 
through the connection which he had thus opened with the press. 
He was not known, or at any rate he was unrecognised, by Fraser 
in January, 1835, in which month an amusing catalogue was given 
of the writers then employed, with portraits of them all seated at 
a symposium. I can trace no article to his pen before November, 
1837, when the YellowplMsh Correspondence was commenced, 
though it is hardly probable that he should have commenced with 
a work of so much pretension. There had been published a 
volume called My Book, or the Anatomy of Conduct by John Skel- 
ton, and a very absurd book no doubt it was. We may presume 
that it contained maxims on etiquette, and that it was intended to 
convey in print those invaluable lessons on deportment which, as 
Dickens has told us, were subsequently given by Mr. Turveydrop, 
in the academy kept by him for that purpose, Thackeray took this 
as his foundation for the Fashionable Fax and Polite Annygoats, 
by Jeames Yellowplush, with which he commenced those repeated 
attacks against snobbism which he delighted to make through a 
considerable portion ti his literary life. Oliver Yorke has himself 
added four or five pages of his own to Thackeray's lucubrations ; 
and with the second, and some future numbers, there appeared 
illustrations by Thackeray himself, illustrations at this time not hav- 
ing been common with the magazine. From all this I gather that 
the author was already held in estimation by Fraser's confraternity. 
I remember well my own delight with Yellowplush at the time, and 
how I inquired who was the author. It was then that I first heard 
Thackeray's name. 

The Yellowplush Papers were continued through nine numbers. 
No further reference was made 'to Mr. Skelton and his book be- 
yond that given at the beginning of the first number, and the satire 
is onlv shown by the attempt made by Yellowplush, the footman, to 
give his ideas generally on the manners of noble life. The idea 
geems to be that a gentleman may, in heart and in action, be as vuV 



THACKERAY. 43 

gar as a footman. No doubt he may, but the chances are very- 
much that he won't. But the virtue of the memoir does not con- 
sist in the lessons, but in the general drollery of the letters. The 
" orthogwaphy is inaccuwate," as a certain person says in the 
memoirs — " so inaccuwate " as to take a positive study to " cow- 
pwehend " it ; but the joke, though old, is so handled as to be very 
amusing. Thackeray soon rushes away from his criticisms on 
snobbism to other matters. There are the details of a card-sharp- 
ing enterprise, in which we cannot but feel that we recognise some- 
thing of the author's own experiences in the misfortunes of Mr. 
Dawkins ; there is the Earl of Crab's, and then the first of those 
attacks which he was tempted to make on the absurdities of his 
brethren of letters, and the only one which now has the appearance 
of having been ill-natured. His first victims were Dr. Dionysius 
Lardner and Mr. Edward Bulwer Lytton, as he was then. We 
can surrender the doctor to the whip of the satirist ; and for 
" Sawedwadgeorgeearllittnbulwig," as the novelist is made to call 
himself, we can well believe that he must himself have enjoyed the 
Yellowplush Memoirs if he ever reread them in after-life. The 
speech in which he is made to dissuade the footman from joining 
the world of letters is so good that I will venture to insert it : 
" Bullwig was violently affected ; a tear stood in his glistening i. 
* Yellowplush,' says he, seizing my hand, 'you are right. Quit 
not your present occupation ; black boots, clean knives, wear plush 
all your life, but don't turn literary man. Look at me. I am the 
first novelist in Europe. I have ranged with eagle wings over the 
wide regions of literature, and perched on every eminence in its 
turn. I have gazed with eagle eyes on the sun of philosophy, and 
fathomed the mysterious depths of the human mind. All languages 
are familiar to me, all thoughts are known to me, all men under- 
stood by me. I have gathered wisdom from the honeyed lips of 
Plato, as we wandered in the gardens of the academies ; wisdom, 
too, from the mouth of Job Johnson, as we smoked our backy in 
Seven Dials. Such must be the studies, and such is the mission, 
in this world of the Poet-Philosopher. But the knowledge is only 
emptiness ; the initiation is but misery ; the initiated a man shun- 
ned and banned by his fellows. Oh ! ' said Bullwig, clasping his 
hands, and throwing his fine i's up to the chandelier, ' the curse of 
Fwomethus descends upon his wace. Wath and punishment pur- 
sue them from genewation to genewation ! Wo to genius, the 
heaven-sealer, the fire-stealer ! Wo and thrice-bitter desolation I 
Earth is the wock on which Zeus, wemorseless, stwetches his with- 
ing wictim ;— men, the vultures that feed and fatten on him. Ai, 
ai ! it is agony eternal — gwoaning and solitawy despair ! And you, 
Yellowplush, would penetwate these rnystewies ; you would waise 
the awful veil, and stand in the twemendous Pwesence. Beware, 
as you value your peace, beware ! Withdwaw, wash Neophyte ! 
For heaven's sake ! O for heaven's sake !'— Here he looked round" 
with agony ;— ' give me a glass of bwandy-and-water, for this clawftt 
Is beginning to disagwee with me.' " It was thus that Thackeray 



44 THACKERAY. 

began that vein of satire on his contemporaries of which it may be 
said that the older he grew the more amusing it was, and at the 
same time less likely to hurt the feelings of the author satirised. 

The next tale of any length from Thackeray's pen, in the maga- 
zine, was that called Catherine^ which is the story taken from the 
life of a wretched woman called Catherine Hayes. It is certainly 
not pleasant reading, and was not written with a pleasant purpose. 
It assumes to have come from the pen of Ikey Solomon, of Horse- 
monger Lane, and its object is to show how disgusting would be 
the records of thieves, cheats, and murderess, if their doings and 
language were described according to their nature, instead of being 
handled in such a way as to create sympathy, and therefore imita- 
tion. Bulwer's Eugene A7'a?n, Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Shep' 
pard, and Dickens' Nancy were in his mind, and it was thus that he 
preached his sermon against the selection of such heroes and hero 
ines bythe novelists of the day. " Be it granted," he says, in his epil- 
ogue " Solomon is dull ; but don't attack his morality. He humbly 
submits that, in his poem, no man shall mistake virtue for vice, no, 
man shall allow a single sentiment of pity or admiration to enter his 
bosom for any character in the poem, it being from beginning to 
end a scene of unmixed rascality, performed by persons who never 
deviate into good feeling." The intention is intelligible enough, 
but such a story neither could have been written nor read — certainly 
not written by Thackeray, nor read by the ordinary reader of a first- 
class magazine — had he not been enabled to adorn it by infinite wit. 
Captain Brock, though a brave man, is certainly not described as 
an interesting or gallant soldier ; but he is possessed of great re- 
sources. Captain Macshane, too, is a thorough blackguard ; but 
he is one with a dash of loyalty about him, so that the reader can 
almost sympathise with him, and is tempted to say that Ikey Solo* 
mon has net quite kept his promise. 

Catherine appeared in 1839 and 1840, In the latter of those 
years The Shabby Genteel story also came out. Then, in 1841, 
there followed The History of Saintiel Tit marsh and the^ Great 
Hoggarty Diajnond, illustrated by Samuel's cousin, Michael An- 
gelo. But though so announced in Eraser., there were no illustra- 
tions, and those attached to the story in later editions are not taken 
from sketches by Thackeray. This, as far as I know, was the 
first use of the name Titmarsh, and seems to indicate some inten- 
tion on the part of the author of creating a hoax as to two person- 
ages — one the writer and the other the illustrator. If it were so, 
he must soon have dropped the idea. In the last paragraph he 
has shaken off his cousin Michael. The main object of the story 
is to expose the villany of bubble companies, and the danger they 
run who venture to have dealings with city matters which they do 
not understand. I cannot but think that he altered his mind and 
changed his purpose while he was writing it, actuated probably by 
that editorial monition as to its length. 

In 1842 were commenced The Confessions of George Eits- 
^Boodle f wlaich were continued into 1843. I ^o ^^^ think that they 



THACKERAY. 



45 



attracted much attention, or that they have become peculiarly popu- 
lar since. They are supposed to contain the reminiscenf;ps of a 
younger son, who moans over his poverty, complains of wonrari- 
kind generally, laughs at the world all round, and intersp^irses his 
pages with one or two excellent ballads. I quote ont, written 
for the sake of affording a parod}^, with the parody along with it, 
because the two together give so strong an example of the condi- 
tion of Thackeray's mind in regard to literary products. The 
"humbug" of everything, the pretence, the falseness of affected 
sentiment, the remoteness of poetical pathos from the true condi- 
tion of the average minds of men and women, struck him so 
strongly, that he sometitpes allowed himself almost to feel — or at 
any rate, to say — that poetical expression, as being above nature, 
must be unnatural. He had declared to himself that all humbug 
was odious, and should be by him laughed down to the extent of 
his capacity. His Yellowplush, his Catherine Hayes, his Fitz- 
Boodle, his Barry Lyndon, and Becky Sharp, with many others of 
this kind, were all invented and treated for this purpose and after 
this fashion. I shall have to say more on the same subject when 
I come to The Snob Papers. In this instance he wrote a very 
pretty ballad, T/ie Willow T7^ee—s,o good that if left by itself it 
v/ould create no idea of absurdity or extravagant pathos in the 
mind of the ordinary reader — simply that he might render his own 
work absurd by his own parody. 



THE WILLOW-TREE. 
No. I. 



THE WILLOW-TREE. 



No. n. 



Know ye the willow-tree, 

Whose gray leaves quiver, 
Whispering gloomily 

To yon pale river ? 
Lady, at eventide 

Wander not near it ! 
They say its branches hide 

A sad lost spirit ! 

Once to the willow-tree 

A maid came fearful, 
Pale seemed her cheek to be, 

Her blue eye tearful. 
Soon as she saw the tree, 

Her steps moved fleeter, 
No one was there — ah me ! — 

No one to meet her! 

Quick beat her heart to hear 
The far bells' chime 

Toll from the chapel tower 
The trysting-time. 



Long by the willow-tree 
Vainly they sought her, 

Wild rang the mother's screams 
O'er the gray water. 

** Where is my lovely one ? 
Where is my daughter .'' 

Rouse thee, sir constable — 

Rouse thee and look. 
Fisherman, bring your net, 

Boatman, yoor hook. 
Beat in the lily-beds. 

Dive in the brook." 

Vainly the constable 
Shouted and called her. 

Vainly the fisherman 
Beat the green alder. 

Vainly he threw the net. 
Never it hauled her 1 

Mother beside the fire 
Sat, her night-cap in ; 



46 



THACKERAY. 



But the red sun went down 

In golden flame, 
A^d though she looked around, 

Vet no one came ! 

Presently came the night, 

Sadly to greet her — 
Moon in her silver light, 

Stars in their glitter. 
Then sank the moon away 

Under the billow. 
Still wept the maid alone — 

There by the willow ! 

Through the long darkness. 

By the stream rolling, 
Hour after hour went on 

Tolling and tolling. 
Long was the darkness, 

Lonely and stilly. 
Shrill came the night wind, 

Piercing and chilly. 

Shrill blew the morning breeze, 

Biting and cold. 
Bleak peers the gray dawn 

Over the wold ! 
Bleak over moor and stream 

Looks the gray dawn, 
Gray with dishevelled hair. 
Still stands the willow there— 

The maid is gone 1 

Domine, Domine ! 
Sing we a litany — 
Sing for poor maiden hearts 
broken and weary ; 
Sing we a litany, 
Wail we and weep we a 
wild miserere 1 



I 



Father in easy- chair, 
Gloomily napping ; 

When at the window-sill 
Came a light tapping. 

And a pale countenance 

Looked through the casement 
Loud beat the- mother's heart 

Sick with amazement, 
And at the vision which 

Came to surprise her ! 
Shrieking in an agony — 

" Lor' I it's Elizar I " 

Yes, 'twas Elizabeth ; — 

Yes, 'twas their girl : 
Pale was her cheek, and her 

liair out of curl. 
" Mother ! " the loved one. 

Blushing exclaimed, 
*' Let not your innocent 

Lizzy be blamed. 

Yesterday, going to Aunt 

Jones's to tea, 
Mother, dear mother, I 

Forgot the door-key ! 
And as the night was cold, 

And the way steep, 
Mrs. Jones kept me to 

Breakfast and sleep." 

W^hether her pa and ma 

Fully believed her. 
That we shall never know. 

Stern -they received her ; 
And for the work of that 

Cruel, though short, night- 
Sent her to bed without 

Tea for a fortnight. 

Moral. 

Hey diddle diddlety, 
Cat and the fiddlety. 
Maidens of England take 
caution by she ! 
Let love and suicide 
Never tempt you aside, 
And always remember to take 
the door-key ! 

Mr. George Fitz-Boodle gave his name to other narratives be« 
ond his own Confessions. A series of stories was carried on by 
im in Eraser called, Men's IVives, containing three : Ravetiwing,^ 



TH ACKER A Y, 



47 



Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry and Dennis Hoggarty^s Wife. The first 
z\^2c^\.^x \vi Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry describes "The Fight at 
Slaughter House." Slaughter House, as Mr. Venables reminded 
us in the last chapter, was near Sraithfield, in London — the school 
which afterwards became Grey Friars ; and the fight between 
Biggs and Berry is the record of one which took place in the flesh 
when Thackeray was at the Charter House. But Mr. Fitz-Boodle's 
name was afterwards attached to a greater work than these, to a 
Work so great that subsequent editors have thought him to be un- 
worthy of the honour. In the January number, 1844, of Fraser^s 
Magazine 2irQ commenced the Memoirs of Barry Lyndon^ and the 
authorship is attributed to Mr. Fitz-Boodle. The title given in 
the magazine was The Luck of Barry Lyndon: a Romance of the 
last Century. By Fitz-Boodle. In the collected edition of Thack- 
eray's works the Memoirs are given as " Written by himself," 
and were, I presume, so brought out by Thackeray, after they had 
appeared in Fraser. Why Mr. George Fitz-Boodle should have 
been robbed of so great an honour I do not know. 

In imagination, language, construction, and general literar}' capa- 
city, Thackeray never did anything more remarkable than Barry 
Lytidon. I have quoted the words which he put into the mouth of 
liceySolomon, declaring that in the story which he has there told he 
has created nothing but disgust for the wicked characters he has pro- 
duced, and that he has '• used his humble endeavours to cause the pub- 
lic also to hate them." Here, in Barry Lyndon, he has, probably un- 
consciously, acted in direct opposition to his own principles. Barry 
Lyndon is as great a scoundrel as the mind of man ever conceived. 
He is one who might have taken as his motto Satan's words : " Evil, 
be thou my good." And yet his story is so written that it is almost 
impossible not to entertain something of a friendly feeling for him. 
He tells his own adventures as a card-sharper, bully, and liar ; as a 
heartless wretch, who had neither love nor gratitude in his com- 
position ; who had no sense even of loyalty; who regarded gam- 
bling as the highest occupation to which a man could devote him- 
self, and fraud as always justified by success ; a man possessed by 
all meannesses except cowardice. And the reader is so carried 
away by his frankness and energy as almost to rejoice when he 
succeeds, and to grieve with him when he is brought to the ground. 

The man is perfectly satisfied as to the reasonableness — I might 
almost say, as to the rectitude — of his own conduct throughout. 
He is one of a decayed Irish family, that could boast of good 
blood. His father had obtained possession of the remnants of the 
property by turning Protestant, thus ousting the elder brother, who 
later on becomes his nephew's confederate in gambling. The 
elder brother is true to the old religion, and as the law stood in the 
last century, the younger brother, by changing his religion, was 
able to turn him out. Barry, when a boy, learns the slang and the 
gait of the debauched gentlemen of the day. He is specially proyd 
of being a gentleman by birth and manners. He had been kid- 
napped, and made to serve as a common soldier, but boasts that he 



48 THACKERAY. 

was at once fit for the occasion when enabled to show as a court 
gentleman. " I came to it at once," he says, " and as if I had never 
done anything else all ray life. I had a gentleman to wait upon me, 
a Yx&xiC^ friseur to dress my hair of a morning. I knew the taste 
of chocolate as by intuition almo^st, and could distinguish between 
the right Spanish and the French before I had been a week in my 
new position. I had rings on all my fingers and -watches in both 
my fobs — canes, trinkets, and snuff-boxes of all sorts. I had the 
finest natural taste for lace and china of any man I ever knew.'' 

To dress well, to wear a sword with a grace, to carry away his 
plunder with affected indifference, and to appear to be equally 
easy w^hen he loses his last ducat, to be agreeable to women, and 
to look like a gentleman — these are his accomplishments. In one 
place he rises to the height of a grand professor in the art of gam- 
bling, and gives his lessons with almost a noble air. '-Play grandly, 
honorably. Be not, of course, cast down at losing ; but above all, 
be not eager at winning, as mean souls are." And he boasts of 
his accomplishments with so much eloquence as to make the reader 
sure that he believes in them. He is quite pathetic over himself, 
and can describe with heartrending words the evils that befall him 
when others use against him successfully any of the arts which he 
practises himself. 

The marvel of the book is not so much that the hero should 
evidently think well of himself, as that the author should so tell 
his story as to appear to be altogether on the hero's side. In Caiher- 

* ine^ the horrors described are most truly disgusting — so much that 
the story, though very clever, is not pleasant reading. The Me- 
fJZGzrs of Barry Lyndon are very^pleasant to read. There is nothing 
to shock or disgust. The style of narrative is exactly that which 
might be used as to the exploits of a man whom the author intended 
to represent as deserving of sympathy and praise — so that the reader 
is almost brought to sympathise. But I Should be doing an injustice 
to Thackeray if I were to leave an impression that he had taught les- 

, sons tending to evil practice, such as he supposed to have been left 
by Jack Shcppardox Eugene Ara77i. No one will be tempted to un- 
dertake the life of a chevalier dHndusirie by reading the Look, or be 
made to think that cheating at cards is either an agreeable or a proiit- 
able profession. The following is excellent as a tirade in favour of 
gambling, coming from Redmond de Balibari, as he came to be 
called during hisadventures abroad, but it will hardly persuade any- 
one to be a gambler : 

"We always played on parole with anybody — any person, that 
is, of honor and noble lineage. We never pressed for our winnings, 
or declined to receive promissory notes in lieu of gold. But woe 
to the man that did not pav when the note became due ! Redmond 
de Balibari was sure to wait upon him, with his bill, and I promise 
you there were very few bad debts. On the contrary, gentlemen 
were grateful to us for our forbearance, and our character for 
honour stood unimpeached. In latter times, a vulgar national prej- 
udice has chosen to cast a §lur upon the character of men of honour 



THACKERAY. 



49 



engaged in the profession of play; but I speak of the good old days 
of Europe, before the cowardice of the French aristocracy (in the 
shameful revolution, which served them right) brought discredit 
upon our order. They cry fie now upon men engaged in play; but 
I should like to know how much more honourable their modes of 
livelihood are than ours. The broker of the Exchange, who bulls 
and bears, and buys and sells, and dabbles with lying loans, and 
trades upon state-secrets — what is he but a gamester.^ The mer- 
chant who deals in teas and tallow, is he any better 1 His bales 
of dirty indigo are his dice, his cards come up every year instead of 
every ten minutes, and the sea is his green-table. You call the pro- 
fession of the law an honourable one, where a man will lie for any 
bidder — lie down poverty for the sake of a fee from wealth ; lie 
down right because wrong is in his brief. You call a doctor an 
honorable man — a swindling quack who does not believe in the nos- 
trums which he prescribes, and takes your guinea for whispering in 
your ear that it is a fine morning. And yet, forsooth, a gallant man, 
who sits him down before the baize and challenges all comers, his 
money against theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed by 
your modern moral world ! It is a conspiracy of the middle-class 
against gentlemen. It is only the shopkeeper cant which is to go 
down nowadays. I say that play was an institution of chivalry. 
It has been wrecked along with other privileges of men of birth. 
When Seingalt engaged a man for six-and-thirty hours without 
leaving the table, do you think he showed no courage ? How have 
we had the best blood, and the brightest eyes too, of Europe throb- 
bing round the table, as I and my uncle have held the cards and the 
bank against some terrible player, who was matching some thousands 
out of his millions against our all, which was there on the baize ! 
When we engaged that daring Alexis Kossloffsky, and v\^on seven 
thousand louis on a single coup, had w^e lost we should have been 
beggars the next day ; when he lost, he was only a village and a 
few hundred serfs in pawn the worse. When at Toeplitz the Duke 
of Courland brought fourteen lacqueys, each with foar bags of 
florins, and challenged our bank to play against the sealed bags, what 
did we ask t ' Sir,' said we, ' we ' have but eighty thousand florins 
in bank, or two hundred thousand at three months. If your higb- 
ness's bags do not contain more than eighty thousand we will meet 
you.' And we did ; and after eleven hours' play in which our bank 
was at one time reduced to two hundred and three ducats, we won 
seventeen thousand florins of him. Is this not something like bold- 
ness ? Does this profession not require skill, and perseverance, 
and bravery? Four crowned heads looked on at the game, and an 
imperial princess, when I turned up the ace of hearts and made 
Paroli, burst into tears. No man on the European Continent held 
a higher position than Redmond Barry then ; and when the Duke of 
Courland lost, he was pleased to say that we had won nobly- And 
so we had, and spent nobly what we won." This is very grand, 
and is put as an eloquent man would put it who really wished to 
defend gambling. 



so 



THACKERAY. 



The rascal, of course, comes to a miserable end, but the tone 
of the narrative is continued throughout. He is brought to live at 
last with his old mother in the Fleet prison, on a wretched annuity 
of fifty pounds per annum, which she has saved out of the general 
wreck, and there he dies of delirium tremens. For an assumed 
tone of continued irony, maintained through the long memoir of a 
life, never becoming tedious, never unnatural, astounding us rather 
by its naturalness, 1 know nothing equal to Barry Lyndon. 

As one reads, one sometimes is struck by a conviction that this 
or the other writer has thoroughly liked the work on which he is 
engaged. There is a gusto about his passages, a liveliness in the 
language, a spring in the motion of the words, an eagerness of 
description, a lilt, if I may so call it, in the progress of the narra- 
tive, which makes the reader feel that the author has himself 
greatly enjoyed what he has written. He has evidently gone on 
with his work without any sense of weariness or doubt ; and the 
words have come readily to him. So it has been with Barry 
Lyndon. " My mind was filled full with those blackguards," 
Thackeray once said to a friend. It is easy enough to see that it 
was so. In the passage which I have above quoted, his mind was 
running over with the idea that a rascal might be so far gone in 
rascality as to be in love with his own trade. 

This was the last of Thackeray's long stories in Fraser. I 
have given by no means a complete catalogue of his contributions 
to the magazine, but I have perhaps mentioned those which are 
best known. Thejpe were many short pieces which have now been 
collected in his works, such as Little Travels and Roadside 
Sketches^ and the Carmen Lilliense, in which the poet is supposed 
to be detained at Lille by want of money. There are others which 
I think are not to be found in the collected works, such as a Box 
of Novels by Titmarsk^ and Tiimarsh in the Picture Galleries. 
After the name of Titmarsh had been once assumed it was gener- 
ally used in the papers which he sent to Fraser. 

Thackeray's connection with Punch began in 1843, and, as far 
as I can learn. Miss Tickletoby'' s Lectures on English History 
was his first contribution. They, however, have not been found 
worthy of a place in the collected edition. His short pieces during 
a long period of his life were so numerous that to have brought 
them all together would have weighted his more important works 
with two great an amount of extraneous matter. The same lady, 
Miss Tickletoby, gave a series of lectures. There was The His- 
tory of the next French Revolution^ and The Wanderings of our 
Fat Contributor — the first of which is, and the latter is not, perpet- 
uated in his works. Our old friend Jeames Yellowplush, or De la 
Pluche — for we cannot for a moment doubt that he is the same 
Jeames — is very prolific, and as excellent in his orthography, his 
sense, and satire, as ever. These papers began with The Lucky 
Speculator. He lives in The Albany; he hires a brougham ; and 
is devoted to Miss Emily Flimsey, the daughter of Sir George, 
who had been his master — to the great injury of poor Maryanne, 



THACKERAY. 



51 



the fellow-servant who had loved him in his kitchen days. Then 
there follows that wonderful ballad, Jeaines of Backley Square. 
Upon this he writes an angry letter to Punchy dated from his 
chambers in The Albany: " Has a regular suscriber to your amus- 
ing paper, I beg leaf to state that I should never have done so had 
I supposed that it was your 'abbit to igspose the mistaries of privit 
life, and to hinger the delligit feelings of umble individyouls like 
myself." He writes in his own defence, both as to Maryanne and 
to the share-dealing by which he had made his fortune ; and he 
ends with declaring his right to the position which he holds. 
"You are correct in stating that I am of hancient Normin fam'ly. 
This is more than Peal can say, to whomb I applied for a barnetcy ; 
but the primmier being of low igstraction, natrally stikles for his 
border." And the letter is signed " Fitzjames De la Pluche." 
Then follows his diary, beginning with a description of the way in 
which he rushed into Puftch^s office, declaring his misfortunes, 
when losses had come upon him. " I wish to be paid for my con- 
tribewtions to your paper. Suckmstances is altered with me.'* 
Whereupon he gets a Cheque upon Messrs. Pump and Aldgate, 
and has himself carried away to new speculations. He leaves his 
diary behind him, and Picnch surreptitiously publishes it. There is 
much in the diary which comes from Thackeray's very heart. 
Who does not remember his indignation against Lord Bareacres } 
"I gave the old humbug a few shares out of my own pocket. 

* There, old Pride,' says I, ' I like to see you down on your knees 
to a footman. There, old Pomposity ! Take fifty pounds. I like 
to see you come cringing and begging for it!' Whenever I see 
him in a very public place, I take my change for my money. I 
digg him in the ribs, or clap his padded old shoulders. I call him 

* Bareacres, my old brick,' and I see him wince. It does my 'art 
good." It does Thackeray's heart good to pour himself out in 
indignation against some imaginary Bareacres. He blows off his 
steam with such an eagerness that he forgets for a time, or nearly 
forgets, his cacography. Then there are " Jeames on Time Barg- 
ings," "Jeames on the Guage Question," " Mr. Jeames again." Of 
all our author's heroes Jeames is perhaps the most amusing. 
There is not much in that joke of bad spelling, and we should have 
been inclined to say beforehand, that Mrs. Malaprop had done it 
so well and so sufficiently, that no repetition of it would be re- 
ceived with great favour. Like other dishes, it depends upon the 
cooking. Jeames, with his " suckmstances," high or low, will be 
immortal. 

There were The Travels in London, a long series of them ; and 
then Punches Prize Novelists, in which Thackeray imitates the lan- 
guage and plots of Bulwer, Disraeli, Charles Lever, G. P. R. James, 
Mrs. Gore, and Cooper, the American. They are all excellent j 
perhaps Codlingsby is the best. Mendoza, when he is fighting with 
the bargeman, or drinking with Codh'ngsby, or receiving Louis 
Philippe in his rooms, seems to have come direct from the pen of 
our Premier. Phil Fogerty's jump, and the younger and the ^Idpl 



2 2 THACKERAY. 

horsemen, as they come riding into the story, one in his armouf 
and the other with his feathers, have the very savour and tone of 
Lever and James ; but then the savour and the tone are not so 
piquant. I know nothing in the way of imitation to equal Cod- 
lingsby, if it be not The Tale of Drury Lane, by W. S. in the Re' 
fected Addresses, of which it is said that Walter Scott declared that 
he must have written it himself. The scene between Dr. Frank- 
lin, Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and Tatua, the chief of the 
Nose-rings, as told in The Stars and Stripes, is perfect in its way, 
but it fails as being a caricature of Cooper. The Caricaturist has 
been carried away beyond and above his model, by his own sense 
of fun. 

Of the ballads which appeared in Punch I will speak elsewhere, 
as I must give a separate short chapter to our author's power of 
versification ; but I must say a word of The S)wb Papers, which 
were at the time the most popular and the best known of all Thack- 
eray's contributions to Pmich. I think that perhaps they were 
more charming, more piquant, more apparently true, when they 
came out one after another in the periodical, than they are now as 
collected together. I think that one at a time would be better than 
many. And I think that the first half in the long list of snobs 
would have been more manifestly snobs to us than they are now 
with the second half of the list appended. In fact, there are too 
many of them, till the reader is driven to tell himself that the mean- 
ing of it all is that Adam's family is from first to last a family of 
snobs. " First," says Thackeray, in preface, " the world was made ; 
then as a matter of course, snobs ; they existed for years and years, 
and were no more known than America. But presently — ingens 
patebat tellus — the people became darkly aware that there was such 
a race. Not above five-and-twenty years since, a name, an ex- 
pressive monosyllable, arose to designate that case. That name has 
spread over England like railroads subsequently ; snobs are known 
and recognised throughout an empire on which I am given to un- 
derstand the sun never sets. Punch appears at the right season 
to chronicle their history; and the individual comes forth to write 
that history in Punch. 

" I have — and for this gift I congratulate myself with a deep 
and abiding thankfulness — an eye for a snob. If the truthful is 
the beautiful, it is beautiful to study even the snobbish — to track 
snobs through history as certain little dogs in Hampshire hunt out 
trufHes ; to sink shafts in society, and come upon rich veins of 
snob-ore. Snobbishness is like Death, in a quotation from Horace, 
which I hope you never heard, ' beating with equal foot at poor 
men's doors, and kicking at the gates of emperors.' It is a great 
mistake to judge of snobs lightly, and think they exist among the 
lower classes merely. An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, 
is to be found in every rank of this mortal life. You must not 
judge hastily or vulgarly of snobs; to do so shows that you are 
yourself a snob. I myself have been taken for one." 

The state of Thackeray's mind when he commenced hisdelinea- 



THACKERAY. 



53 



tions of snobbery is here accurately depicted. Written, as these 
papers were, for Ptmch^ and written, as they were, by Thackeray, 
it was a necessity that every idea put forth should be given as a 
joke, and that the satire on society in general should be wrapped 
up in burlesque absurdity. But not the less eager and serious was 
his intention. When he tells us, at the end of the first chapter, of 
a certain Colonel Snobley, whom he met at " Bagnigge Wells," as 
he says, and with whom he was so disgusted that he determined to 
drive the man out of the house, we are well aware that he had met 
an offensive military gentleman — probably at Tunbridge. Gentle- 
men thus offensive, even though tamely offensive, were peculiarly of- 
fensive to him. We presume, by what follows, that this gentleman, 
ignorantly — for himself most unfortunately — spoke of Pubicola. 
Thackeray was disgusted — disgusted that such a name should be 
lugged into ordinary conversation at all, and then that a man should 
talk about a name with which he was so little acquainted as not to 
know how to pronounce it. The man was therefore a snob, and 
ought to be put down ; in all which I think that Thackeray was un- 
necessarily hard on the man, and gave him too much importance. 

So it was with him in his whole intercourse with snobs — as he 
calls them. He saw something that was distasteful, and a man in- 
stantly became a snob in his estimation. " But you can draw," a 
man once said to him, there having been some discussion on the 
subject of Thackeray's art powers. The man meant no doubt to be 
civil, but meant also to imply that for the purpose needed the 
drawing was good enough — a matter on which he was competent 
to form an opinion. Thackeray instantly put the man down as a 
snob for flattering him. The little courtesies of the world and the 
little discourtesies became snobbish to him. A man could not 
wear his hat, or carry his umbrella, or mount his horse, without 
falling into some error of snobbism before his hypercritical eyes. 
St. Michael would have carried his armour amiss, and St. Cecilia 
have been snobbish as she twanged her harp. 

I fancy that a policeman considers that every man in the street 
would be properly " run in," if only all the truth about the man 
had been known. The tinker thinks that every pot is unsound. 
The cobbler doubts the stability of every shoe. So at last it grew 
to be the case with Thackeray. There was more hope that the 
city should be saved because of its ten just men, than for society, 
if society were to depend on ten who were not snobs. All this 
arose from the keenness of his vision into that which was really 
mean. But that keenness became so aggravated by the intense- 
ness of his search that the slightest speck of dust became to his eyes 
as a foul stain, l^ublicola, as we saw, damned one poor man to a 
wretched immortality, and another was called pitilessly over the 
coals because he had mixed a grain of flattery with a bushel of 
of truth. Thackeray tells us that he was born to hunt out snobs, 
as certain dogs are trained to find truffles. But we can imagine 
that a dog, very energetic at producing truffles, and not finding 
them as plentiful as his heart desired, might occasionally produce 



54 



THACKERAY. 



roots which were not genuine — might be carried on in his energies 
till to his senses every fungus-root became a trufflcc I think that 
there has been something of this with our author's snob-hunting, 
and that his zeal was at last greater than his discrimination. 

The nature of the task which came upon him made this fault 
almost unavoidable. When a hit is made, say with a piece at a 
theatre, or with a set of illustrations, or with a series of papers on 
this or the other subject — when something of this kind has suited 
the taste of the moment, and gratified the public, there is a natural 
inchnation on the part of those who are interested to continue that 
which has been found to be good. It pays and it pleases, and it 
seems to suit everybody. Then i^ is continued usque ad nauseam, 
We see it in everything. When the king said he hked partridges, 
partridges were served to him every day. The world was pleased 
with certain ridiculous portraits of its big men. The big men were 
soon used up, and the little men had to be added. 

We can imagine that even Pzinch vi\2iy occasionally be at a loss 
for subjects wherewith to delight its readers. In fact, The Snob 
Papers were too good to be brought to an end, and therefore there 
were forty-five of them. A dozen would have been better. As he 
himself says in his last paper, " for a mortal year we have been 
together flattering and abusing the human race." It was exactly 
that. Of course we know — everybody always knows — that a bad 
specimen of his order may be found in every division of society. 
There may be a snob king, a snob parson, a snob member of par- 
liament, a snob grocer, tailor, goldsmith, and the like. But that is 
riot what has been meant. We did not want a special satirist to 
tell us what we all knew before. Had snobbishness been divided 
for us into its various attributes and characteristics, rather than at- 
tributed to various classes, the end sought — the exposure, namely, 
of the evil — would have been better attained. The snobbishness 
of flattery, of falsehood, of cowardice, lying, time-serving, money- 
worship, would have been perhaps attacked to a better purpose 
than that of kings, priests, soldiers, merchants, or men of letters. 
The assault as made by Thackeray seems to have been made on 
the profession generally. 

The paper on clerical snobs is intended to be essentially gen. 
erous, and is ended by an allusion to certain old clerical friends 
which has a sweet tone of tenderness in it. " How should he who 
knows you, not respect you or your calling? May this pen never 
write a pennyworth again if it ever casts ridicule upon either." 
But in the mean time he has thrown his stone at the covetousness 
of bishops, because of certain Irish prelates who died rich many 
years before he wrote. The insinuation is that bishops generally 
take more of the loaves and fishes than they ought, whereas the 
fact is that bishops' incomes are generally so insufficient for the 
requirements demanded of them, that a feeling prevails that a 
clergyman to be fit for a bishopric should have a private income. 
He attacks the snobbishness of the universities, showing us how 
one class of young men consists of fellow-commoners, who weat 



THACKERAY 55 

lace and drink wine with their meals, and another class consists of 
sizars, or servitors, who wear badges, as being poor, and are never 
allowed to take their food with their fellow-students. That ar- 
rano-ements fit for past times are not fit for these is true enough. 
Consequently, they should gradually be changed, and from day to 
day are changed. But there is no snobbishness in this. Was the 
fellow-commoner a snob when he acted in accordance with the 
custom of his rank and standing ? or the sizar who accepted aid 
in achieving that education which he could not have got without 
it ? or the tutor of the college, who carried out the rules entrusted 
to him ? There are two military snobs. Rag and Famish. One is 
a swindler, and the other a debauched young idiot. No doubt 
they are both snobs, and one has been, while the other is, an 
officer. But there is, I think, not an unfairness so much as an 
absence of intuition, in attaching to soldiers especially two vices 
to which all classes are open. Rag was a gambling snob, and 
Famish a drunken snob ; but they were not specially military 
snobs. There is a chapter devoted to dinner-giving snobs, in 
which I think the doctrine laid down will not hold water, and there- 
fore that the snobbism imputed is not proved. "Your usual style 
of meal," says the satirist — "that is plenteous, comfortable, and in 
its perfections-should be that to which you welcome your friends." 
Then there is something said about the " Brummagem plate pomp," 
and we are told that it is right that dukes should give grand 
dinners, but that we — of the middle class — should entertain our 
friends with the simplicity which is customary with us. In all 
this there is, I think, a mistake. The duke gives a grand dinner 
because he thinks his friends will like it ; sitting down when alone 
with the duchess, we may suppose, with a retinue and grandeur 
less than that which is arrayed for gala occasions. So is it with 
Mr. Jones, who is no snob because he provides a costly dinner — 
if he can afford it. He does it because he thinks his friends will 
like it. It may be that the grand dinner is a bore — and that the 
leg of mutton, with plenty of gravy and potatoes all hot, would be 
nicer. I generally prefer the leg of mutton myself. But I do not 
think that snobbery is involved in the other. A man, no doubt, 
may be a snob in giving a dinner. I am not a snob because for 
the occasion I eke out my own dozen silver forks with plated ware ; 
but if I make believe that my plated ware is true silver, then I am 
a snob. 

In that matter of association with our oetters — we will for the 
moment presume that gentlemen and ladies with titles or great 
wealth are our betters — great and delicate questions arise as to what 
is snobbery and what is not, in speaking of which Thackeray becomes 
very indignant, and explains the intensity of his feelings as thor- 
oughly by a charming little picture as by his words. It is a picture 
of Queen Elizabeth as she is about to trample with disdain on the 
coat which that snob Raleigh is throwing for her use on the mud 
before her. This is intended to typify the low parasite nature of 
the Englishman which has been described in the previous page 01 



^6 THACKERAY. 

two. " And of these calm moralists ' — it matters not for our pres- 
ent purpose who were the moralists in question— '• is there one, I 
wonder, whose heart would not throb with pleasure if he could be 
seen walking arm-in-arm with a couple of dukes down Pall Mall? 
No; ii is impossible, in our condition of society, not to be some- 
times a snob." And again : — " How should it be otherwise in 
a country where lordolatry is part of our creed, and where pur 
children are brought up to respect the ' Peerage ' as the Enghsh- 
man's second Bible .? " Then follows the wonderfully graphic pic- 
ture of Queen Ehzabeth and Raleigh. 

In ail this Thackeray has been carried away from the truth by 
his hatred for a certain meanness of which there are no doubt ex- 
amples enough. As for Raleigh, I think we have always sym- 
pathised with the young man, instead of despising him, because 
he felt on the impulse of the moment that nothing was too good 
for the woman and the queen combined. The idea of getting 
something in return for his coat could hardly have come so quick 
to him as'that impulse in favour of royalty and womanhood. ^ If 
one of us to-day should see the queen passing, would he not raise 
his hat, and assume, unconsciously, something of an altered de- 
meanour because of his reverence for majesty ? In doing so he 
would have no mean desire of getting anything. The throne and 
its occupant are to him honourable, and he honours them. There 
is surely no greater mistake than to suppose that reverence is 
snobbishness. I meet a great man in the street, and some chance 
having brought me to his knowledge, he stops and says a word to 
me. Am I a snob because I feel myself to be graced by his no- 
tice ? Surely not. And if his acquaintance goes further and he 
asks me to dinner, am I not entitled so far to think well of myself 
because I have been found worthy of his society ? 

They who have raised themselves in the world, and they, too, 
whose position has enabled them to receive all that estimation can 
give, all that society can furnish, all that intercourse with the great 
can give, are more likely to be pleasant companions than they who 
have been less fortunate. That picture of two companion dukes 
in Pall Mall is too gorgeous for human eye to endure. A man 
would be scorched to cinders by so much light, as he would be 
crushed by a sack of sovereigns even though he might be allowed 
to have them if he could carry them away. But there can be no 
doubt that a peer taken at random as a companion would be pref- 
erable to a clerk from a counting-house — taken at random. The 
clerk might turn out a scholar on your hands, and the peer no 
better than a poor spendthrift ; but the chances are the other 
way. 

A tuft-hunter is a snob, a parasite is a snob, the man who allows 
the manhood within hini to be awed by a coronet is a snob. The 
man wlio worships mere wealth is a snob. But so also is he who, 
in fear le:^t he sliould be called a snob, is afraid to seek the ac- 
quaintance— or if it come to speak of the acquaintance — of those 
whose acquaintance is manifestly desirable. In all this I feel that 



THACKERAY. 



57 



Th^^keray wa3 carried beyond the truth by his intense desire to 
put down what is mean. 

It is in truth well lor us all to know what constitutes snobbism, 
and I think that Thackeray, had he not been driven to dilution 
and dilatation, could have told us. If you will keep your hands 
from picking and stealing, and your tongue from evil speaking, ly- 
ing, and slandering, you will not be a snob. The lesson seems to 
be simple, and perhaps a little trite, but if you look into it, it will 
be found to contain nearly all that is necessary. 

But the excellence of each individual picture as it is drawn is 
not the less striking because there may be found some fault with 
the series as a whole. What can excel the telling of the story of 
Captain Shindy at his club — which is, I must own, as true as it is 
graphic ? Captain Shindy is a real snob. " ' Look at it, sir ; is it 
cooked .? Smell it, sir. Is it meat fit for a gentleman ? ' he roars 
out to the steward, who stands trembling before him, and who in 
vain fells him that the Bishop of Bullooksmithy has just had three 
from the same loin." The telling as regards Captain Shindy is 
excellent, but the sidelong attack upon the episcopate is cruel. 
" All the waiters in the club are huddled round the captain's mut- 
ton-chop. He roars out the most horrible curses at John for not 
bringing the pickles. He utters the most dreadful oaths because 
Thomas has not arrived with the Harvey sauce. Peter comes 
tumbling with the water-jug over Jeames, who is bringing the 

^•glittering canisters with bread.' 

******* 

"Poor Mrs. Shindy and the children are, meanwhile, in dingy 
lodgings somewhere, waited upon by a charity girl in pattens." 

The visit to Castle Carabas, and the housekeeper's description 
of the wonders of the family mansion, is as good. " ' The Side 
Entrance and 'All,' says the housekeeper. ' The halligator hover 
the mantelpiece was brought home by Hadmiral St. Michaels, 
when a capting with Lord Hanson. The harms on the cheers is 
the harms of the Carabas family. The great 'all is seventy feet in 
lenth, iifty-six in breath, and thirty-eight feet 'igh. The carvings 
of the chimlies, representing the buth or Venus and 'Ercules and 
'Eyelash, is by Van Chislum, the most famous sculpture of his hage 
and country. The ceiling, by Cahmanco, represents Painting, 
H architecture, and Music — the naked female figure with the barrel- 
orcran — introducing George, first Lord Carabas, to the Temple of 
the Muses. The winder ornaments is by Vanderputty. The floor 
is Patagonian marble ; and the chandelier in the centre was pre- 
sented to Lionel, second marquis, by Lewy the Sixteenth, whose 
'ead was cut hoff in the French Revolution. We now henter the 
South Gallery," etc., etc. All of which is very good fun, with a 
dash of truth in it also as to the snobbery — only in this it will be 
necessary to be quite sure wdiere the snobbery lies. If my Lord 
Carabas has a "buth of Venus," beautiful for all eyes to see, there 
is no snobbery, only good-nature, in the showing it ; nor is there 
snobbery in going to see it, if a beautiful " buth of Venus " has 



58 



THACKERAY. 



charms for you. If you merely want to see the inside of a lord's 
house, and the lord is puffed up with the pride of showing his, 
then there will be two snobs. 

Of all those papers it may be said that each has that quality of 
a pearl about it which in the previous chapter I endeavoured to eX' 
plain. In each some little point is made in excellent language, so 
as to charm by its neatness, incision, and drollery. But The Snob 
Papers had better be read separately, and not taken in the lump. 

Thackeray ceased to write for Punch in 1852, either entirely or 
almost so. 



THACKERAY. 



59 



CHAPTER III. 

VANITY FAIR. 

Something has been said, in the biographica. chapter, of the 
f^ay in which Vanity Fair was produced, and of the period in the 
author's life in which it was written. He had become famous — to 
a limited extent — by the exquisite nature of his contributions to 
periodicals ; but he desired to do something larger, something 
greater, something, perhaps, less ephemeral. For though Barry 
Lyndon and others have not proved to be ephemeral, it was thus 
that he regarded them. In this spirit he went to work and wrote 
Vanity Fair. 

It may be as well to speak first of the faults which were attrib- 
uted to it. It Wc.s said that the good people were all fools, and 
that the clever people were all knaves. When the critics — the 
talking critics as well as the writing critics — began to discuss 
Vanity Fair, there had already grown up a feeling as to Thackeray 
as an author — that he was one who had taken up the business of 
castigating the vices of the world. Scott had dealt with the heroics, 
whether displayed in his Flora Maclvors or Meg Merilieses, in his 
Ivanhoes or Ochiltrees. Miss Edgeworth had been moral ; Miss 
Austen conventional; Bulwer had been poetical and sentimental; 
Marryatt and Lever had been funny and pugnacious, always with a 
dash of gallantry, displaying funny naval and funny military hfe ; 
and Dickens had already become great in painting the virtues of 
the lower orders. But by all these some kind of virtue had been 
sung, though it might be only the virtue of riding a horse or fight- 
ing a duel. Even Eugene Aram and Jack Sheppard, with whom 
Thackeray found so much fault, were intended to be fine fellows, 
though they broke into houses and committed murders. The prim- 
ary object of all those writers was to create an interest by exciting 
sympathy. To enhance our sympathy personages were introduced 
who were very vile indeed — as Bucklaw, in the guise of a lover, to 
heighten our feelings for Ravenswood and Lucy ; as Wild, as a 
thief-taker, to make us more anxious for the saving of Jack ; as 
Ralph Nickleby, to pile up the pity for his niece Kate. But each 
of these novelists might have appropriately begun with an Artna 
virumque cano. The song was to be of something godlike — even 
with a Peter Simple. With Thackeray it had been altogether dif- 
ferent. Alas, alas ! the meanness of human wishes ; the poorness 
of h'jman results ! That had been his tone. There can be no 



6o THACKERAY, 

doubt that the heroic had appeared contemptible to him, as being 
untrue. The girl who had deceived her papa and mamma seemed 
more probable to him than she who perished under the willow-tree 
from sheer love — as given in the last chapter. Why sing songs 
that are false ? Why tell of Lucy Ashtons and Kate Nicklebys, 
when pretty girls, let them be ever so beautiful, can be silly and sly? 
Why pour philosophy out of the mouth of a fashionable youn g 
gentleman hke Pelham, seeing that young gentlemen of that sort 
rarely, or we may say never, talk after that fashion .? Why make 
a house-breaker a gallant charming young fellow, the truth being 
that house-breakers as a rule are as objectionable in their manners 
as they are in their morals ? Thackeray's mind had in truth worked 
in this way, and he had become a satirist. That had been all very 
well for Eraser and Punch j but when his satire was continued 
through a long novel, in twenty-four parts, readers — who do in 
truth like the heroic better than the wicked — began to declare that 
this writer was no novelist, but only a cynic. 

Thence the question arises what a novel should be — which I 
will endeavour to discuss very shortly in a later chapter. But this 
special fault was certainly found with Vanity Fair at the time. 
Heroines should not only be beautiful, but should be endowed 
also with a quasi celestial grace — grace of dignity, propriety, and 
reticence. A heroine should hardly want to be married, the ar- 
rangement being almost too mundane — and, should she be brought 
to consent to undergo such bond, because of its acknowledged 
utility, it should be at some period so distant as hardly to present 
itself to the mind as a reality. Eating and drinking should be al- 
together indifferent to her, and her clothes should be picturesque 
rather than smart, and that from accident rather than design. 
Thackeray's Ameha does not at all come up to the description here 
given. She is proud of having a lover, constantly declaring to her- 
self and to others that he is "the greatest and the best of men " — 
whereas the young gentleman is, in truth, a very httle man. She 
is not at all indifferent as to her finery, nor, as we see incidentally, 
to enjoying her suppers at Vauxhall. She is anxious to be married 
—and as soon as possible. A hero, too, should be dignified and 
of a noble presence ; a man who, though he may be as poor as 
Nicholas Nickleby, should nevertheless be beautiful on all occa- 
sions, and never deficient in readiness, address, or self-assertion. 
Vanity Fai^- \s specially declared by the author to be "a novel 
without a hero," and therefore we have hardly a right to complain 
of deficiency of heroic conduct in any of the male characters. But 
Captain Dobbin does become the hero, and is deficient. Why was 
he called Dobbin, except to make him ridiculous 1 Why is he so 
shamefully ugly, so shy, so awkward ? Why was he the son of a 
grocer.? Thackeray in so depicting him was determined to run 
counter to the recognised taste of novel readers. And then again 
there was the feehng of another great fault. Let there be the vir- 
tuous in a novel and let there be the vicious, the dignified and the 
undignified, the subhme and the ridiculous — only let the virtuous, 



THACKERAY. 6 1 

the dignified, and the siibh'me be in the ascendant. Edith 
Bellenden, and Lord Evandale, and Morton himself would be too 
stilted, were they not enlivened by Mau-se, and Cuddie, and Pound- 
text. But herie, in this novel, the vicious and the absurd have been 
made to be of more importance than the good and the' noble. 
Becky Sharp and Rawdon Crawley are the real heroine and hero 
of the story. It is with them that the reader is called upon to in- 
terest himself. It is of them that he will think when he is reading 
the book. It is by them that he will judge the book when he has 
read it. There was no doubt a feeling with the public that though 
satire may be very well in its place, it should not be made the back- 
bone of a work so long and so important at this. A short story 
such as Catherine or Barry Lyndon might be pronounced to have 
been called for by the iniquities of an outside world; but this 
seemed to the readers to have been addressed almost to themselves. 
Now men and women like to be painted as Titian would paint them, 
or Raffaelle — not as Rembrandt, or even Rubens. 

Whether the ideal or the real is the best form of a novel may 
be questioned, but there can be no doubt that as there are novel- 
ists who cannot descend from the bright heaven of the imagina- 
tion to walk with their feet upon the earth, so there are others to 
whom it is not given to soar among clouds. The reader must please 
himself, and make his selection if he cannot enjoy both. There 
are many who are carried into a heaven of pathos by the woes of a 
Master of Ravenswood, who fail altogether to be touched by the 
enduring constancy of a Dobbin. There are others — and I will 
not say but they may enjoy the keenest delight which literature 
can give — who cannot employ their minds on fiction unless it be 
conveyed in poetry. With Thackeray it was essential that the rep- 
resentations made by him should be, to his own thinking, life-like. 
A Dobbin seemed to him to be such a one as mic^ht probably be 
met with in the world, whereas to his thinking a Ravenswood was 
simply a creature of the imagination. He should have said of such, 
as we would say of female faces by Raffaelle, that women would 
like to be like them, but are not like them. Men might like to be 
like Ravenswood, and women may dream of men so formed and 
constituted, but such men d« not exist. Dobbins do, and therefore 
iThackeray chose to write of a Dobbin. 

! So also of the preference given to Becky Sharp and to Rawdon 
Crawley. Thackeray thought that more can be done by exposing 
the vices than extolling the virtues of mankind. No doubt he had 
a more thorough belief in the one than in the other. The Dobbins 
he did encounter— seldom ; the Rawdon Crawleys very often. He 
saw around him so much that was mean ! He was hurt so often by 
the little vanities of people ! It was thus that he was driven to 
that overthoughtfulness about snobs of v/hich I have spoken in the 
last chapter. It thus became natural to him to insist on the thing 
which he hated with unceasing assiduity, and only to break out now 
and again into a rapture of love for the true nobility which was 
flear to him — as he did with the character of Captain Dobbin. 



62 THACKERAY. 

It must be added to all this, that, before he has done with his 
snob or his knave, he will generally weave in some little trait of 
humanity by which the sinner shall be relieved from the absolute 
darkness of utter iniquity. He deals with no Varneys or Deputy- 
Shepherds, all villany and all lies, because the snobs and knaves he 
had seen had never been all snob or all knave. Even Shindy 
probably had some feeling for the poor woman he left at home. 
Rawdon Crawley loved his wicked wife dearly, and there were 
moments even with her in which some redeeming trait half recon- 
ciles her to the reader. 

Such were the faults which were found in Vanity Fair j but 
though the faults were found freely, the book was read by all. 
Those who are old enough can well remember the effect which it 
had, and the welcome which was given to the different numbers as 
they appeared. Though the story is vague and wandering, clearly 
commenced without any idea of an ending, yet there is something 
in the telling which makes every portion of it perfect in itself. 
There are absurdities in it which would not be admitted to anyone 
who had not a peculiar gift of making even his absurdities delight- 
ful. No school-girl who ever lived would have thrown back her 
gift-book, as Rebecca did the " dixonary," out of the carriage 
window as she was taken away from School. But who does not 
love that scene with which the novel commences "i How could 
such a girl as Amelia Osborne have got herself into such society 
as that in which we see her at Vauxhall ? But we forgive it all 
because of the telling. And then there is that crowning absurdity 
of Sir Pitt Crawley and his establishment. 

I never could understand how Thackeray in his first serious 
attempt could have dared to subject himself and Sir Pitt Crawley 
to the critics of the time. Sir Pitt is a baronet, a man of large 
property, and in Parliament, to whom Becky Sharp goes as a gover- 
ness at the end of a delightful visit with her friend Amelia Sedley, 
on leaving Miss Pinkerton's school. The Sedley carriage takes 
her to Sir Pitt's door. " When the bell was rung a head appeared 
between the interstices of the dining-room shutters, and the door 
was opened by a man in drab breeches and gaiters, with a dirty old 
coat, a foul old neckcloth lashed round his bristly neck, a shining 
bald head, a leering red face, a pair of twinkling gray eyes, and a 
mouth perpetually on the grin. 

" * This Sir Pitt Crawley's ? ' says John from the box. 

" ' E'es,' says the man at the door, with a nod. 

" * Hand down these 'ere trunks there,' said John. 

** ^ Hand 'em down yourself,' said the porter." 
But John on the box declines to do this, as he cannot leave his 
horses. 

" The bald-headed man, taking his hands out of his breeches* 
pockets, advanced on this summons, and throwing Miss Sharp's 
trunk over his slioulder, carried it into the house." Then Becky 
is shown into the house, and a dismantled dining-room is described 
nto which she is led by the dirty man with the trunk 



THACKERAY. (^7, 

Two kitchen chairs, and a round table, and an attenuated old poker 
and tongs, were, however, gathered round the fireplace, as was a sauce- 
pan over a feeble, sputtering fire. There was a bit of cheese and bread 
and a tin candlestick on the table, and a little black porter in a pint pot. 

" Had your dinner, I suppose ? " This was said by him of the bald 
head. • " It is not too warm for you ? Like a drop of beer ?" 

*• Where is Sir Pitt Crawley ?" said Miss Sharp, majestically. 

" He, he ! /'m Sir Pitt Crawley. Rek'lect you owe me a pint for 
bringing down )'our luggage. He, he ! ask Tmker if I ain't. 

The lady addressed as Mrs. Tinker at this moment made her appear- 
ance, with a pipe and a paper of tobacco, for which she had been de- 
s jatched a minute before Miss Sharp's arrival ; and she handed the articles 
over to Sir Pitt, who had taken his seat by the fire. 

"Where's the farden .? " said he. " I gave you three half-pence; 
Where's the change, old Tinker t " 

" There," replied Mrs. Tinker, flinging down the coin. " It's only 
baronets as cares about farthings," 

Sir Pitt Crawley has always been to me a stretch of audacity 
which I have been unable to understand. But it has been accepted ; 
and from this commencement of Sir Pitt Crawley have grown the 
wonderful characters of the Crawley family — old Miss Crawley, the 
worldly, wicked, pleasure-loving aunt ; the Rev. Bute Crawley 
and his wife, who are quite as worldly ; the sanctimonious elder 
son, who in truth is rot less so ; and Rawdon, who ultimately be- 
comes Becky's husband — who is the bad hero of the book, as 
Dobbin is the good hero. They are admirable; but it is quite 
clear that Thackeray had known nothing of what was coming about 
them when he caused Sir Pitt to eat his tripe with Mrs. Tinker in 
the London dining-room. 

There is a double story running through the book, the parts of 
which are but lightly woven together, of which the former tells us 
the life and adventures of that singular young woman, Becky Sharp ; 
and the other tlie troubles and ultimate success of our noble hero, 
Captain Dobbin. Though it be true that readers prefer, or pretend 
to prefer, the romantic to the common in their novels, and complain of 
pages which are defiled with that which is low, yet I find that the ab- 
surd, the ludicrous, and even the evil, leave more impression behind 
them than the grand, the beautiful, or even the good. Dominie 
Sampson, Dugald Dalgetty, and Bothwell are, I think, more remem- 
bered than Fergus Maclvor, than Ivanhoe himself, or Mr. Butler 
the minister. It certainly came to pass that, in spite of the critics, 
Becky Sharp became the first attraction in Vajiity Fair, When we 
speak now of Vanity Fair, it is always to Becky that our thoughts 
recur. She has made a position for herself in the world of fiction, 
and is one of our established personages. 

I have already said how she, left school, throwing the " dixon- 
ary " out of the window, like diist from her feet, and was taken to 
speiYa a few halcyon weeks with her friend Amelia Sedley, at the 
Sedley mansion in Russell Square. There she meets a brother 
Sedley home from India — the immortal Jos — at whom she began 
to set her hitherto untried cap. Here we become acquainted both 



64 THACKERAY. 

with the Sedley and the Osborms families, with all their domestic 
affections and domestic snobbery, and have to confess that the 
snobbery is stronger than the affection. As we desire to love 
Ameha Sedley, we wish that the people around her were less vul- 
gar or less selfish — especially we wish it in regard to that hand- 
some young fellow, George Osborne, whom she loves with her 
whole heart. But with Jos Sedley we are inclined to be content, 
though he be fat, purse-proud, awkward, a drunkard, and a coward, 
because we do not want anything better for Becky. Becky does 
not want anything better for herself, because the man has money. 
She has been born a pauper. She knows herself to be but ill 
qualified to set up as a beauty — though by dint of cleverness she 
does succeed in that afterwards. She has no advantasies in regard 
to friends or family as she enters life. She must earn her bread 
for herself. ' Young as she is, she loves money, and has a great 
idea of the power of money. Therefore, though Jos is distasteful 
at all points, she instantly makes her attack. She fails, however, 
at any rate for the present. She never becomes his wife, but at 
last she succeeds in getting some of his money. But before that 
time comes she has many a suffering to endure, and many a triumph 
to enjoy. 

She goes to Sir Pitt Crawley as governess for his second 
family, and is taken down to Queen's Crawley in the country. There 
her cleverness prevails, even with the baronet, of whom I have 
just given Thackeray's portrait. She keeps his accounts, and 
writes his letters, and helps him to save money ; she reads with the 
elder sister books they ought not to have read ; she flatters the 
sanctimonious son. In point of fact, she becomes all in all at 
Queen's Crawley, so that Sir Philip himself falls in love with her — • 
for there is reason to think that Sir Pitt may soon become again a 
widower. But there also came down to the baronet's house, on an oc- 
casion of general entertaining, Captain Rawdon Crawley. Of course 
Becky sets her cap at him, and of course succeeds. She always suc- 
ceeds. Though she is only the governess, he insists upon dancing 
with her, to the neglect of all the young ladies of the neighbour- 
hood. They continue to walk together by moonhght — or starlight 
— the great, heavy, stupid, half-tipsy dragoon, and the intriguing, 
covetous, altogether unprincipled young woman. And the two 
young people absolutely come to love one another in their way — 
the heavy, stupid, fuddled dragoon, and the false, covetous, alto- 
gether unprincipled young woman. 

The fat aunt Crawley is a maiden lady, very rich, and Becky 
quite succeeds in gaining the rich aunt by her wiles. The aunt 
becomes so fond of Becky down in tlie country, that when she has 
to return to her own house in town, sick from over-eating, she can- 
not be happy witliout taking Becky with her. So Becky is in- 
stalled in the house in London, havin,<^ been taken away abruptly 
from her pupils, to the great dismay oi-the old lady's long-estab- 
lished resident companion. They all fail in love with her; '""she 
makes herself so charming, she is so clever ; she can even, by help 



THACKBRAV. 



65 



of a little care in dressing, become so picturesque ! As all this 
goes on, the reader feels what a great personage is Miss Rebecca 
Sharp. 

Lady Crawley dies down in the country, while Becky is still 
staying with her sister, who will not part with her. Sir Pitt at 
once rushes up to town, before the funeral, looking for consolation 
where only he can find it. Becky brings him down word from his 
sister's room that the old lady is too ill to see him. 

" So much the better," Sir Pitt answered : " I want to see you, Miss 
Sharp. I want you back at Queen's Crawley, miss," the baronet said. 
His eyes had such a strange look, and was fixed upon her so steadfastly 
that Rebecca Sharp began almost to tremble. Then she half promises, 
talks about the dear children, and angles with the old man. " I tell you 
I want you," he says; " I'm going back to the vuneral, wil] you come back ? 
yes or no ? " 

" I daren't. I don't think — it wouldn't be right — to be alone with you 
sir," Becky said, seemingly in great agitation. 

" I say again, I want you. I can't get along without you. I didn't see 
what it was till you went away. The house all goes wrong. It's not the 
same place. All my accounts has got muddled again. You must come 
back. Do come back. Dear Becky, do come." 

" Come — as what, sir ? " Rebecca gasped out. 

*' Come as Lady Crawley, if you like. There, will that zatisfy you ? 
Come back and be my wife- You're vit for it. Birth be hanged. You're 
as good a lady as ever I see. You've got more brains in your little vinger 
than any baronet's wife in the country. Will you come ? Yes or no .? '* 
Rebecca is startled, but the old mangoes on. "I'll make you happy; 
see if I don't. You shall do what you like, spend what you like, and have 
it all your own way. I'll make you a settlement. I'll do everything 
regular. Look here," and the old man fell down on his knees and leered 
at her like a satyr. 

But Rebecca, though she had been angling, angling for favour 
and love and power, had not expected this. For once in her life 
she loses her presence of mind, and exclaims : " Oh, Sir Pitt ; oh, 
sir ; I — I'm married already ! " She has married Rawdon Crawley, 
Sir Pitt's youngest son, Miss Crawley's favourite among those of 
her family who are looking for her money. But she keeps her 
secret for the present, and writes a charming letter to the Captain: 
" Dearest, — Something tells that we shall conquer. You shall 
leave that odious regiment. Quit gaming, racing, and be a good boy, 
and we shall all live in Park Lane, and ma tante shall leave us all 
her money." Ma iante's money has been in her mind all through, 
but yet she loves him. 

" Suppose the old lady doesn't come to," Rawdon said to his little wife 
as they sat together in the snug li-ttle Brompton lodgings. She had been 
trying the new piano all the morning. The new gloves fitted her to a 
nicety. The new shawl became her wonderfully. The new rings glittered 
on her little hands, and the new watch ticked at her waist. 

"/'// make your fortune," she said; and Delilah patted Samson's 
Cbeek; 



66 THACKERAY. 

•* You can do anything," he said, kissing the little hand. "By Jove 
you can ! and we'll drive down to the Star and Garter and dine, bv Jove !" 

They were neither of them quite heartless at the moment, nor 
did Rawdon ever become quite bad. Then follow the adventures 
of Becky as a married woman, through all of which there is a glim- 
mer of love for her stupid husband, while it is the real purpose of 
her heart to get money how she may — by her charms, by her wit, 
by her lies, by her readiness. She makes love to everyone — even 
to her sanctimonious brother-in-law, who becomes Sir Pitt in his 
time— and always succeeds. But in her love-making there is 
nothing of love. She gets hold of that well-remembered old 
reprobate, the Marquis of Steyne, who possesses the two val- 
uable gifts of being very dissolute and very rich, and from him she 
obtains money and jewels to her heart's desire. The abominations 
of Lord Steyne are depicted in the strongest language of which 
Vanity Fair admits. The reader's hair stands almost on end in 
horror at the wickedness of the two wretches— at her desire for 
money, sheer money ; and his for wickedness, sheer wickedness. 
Then the husband finds her out — poor Rawdon ! who with all his 
faults and thick-headed stupidity, has become absolutely entranced 
by the wiles of his little wife. He is carried off to a sponging- 
house, in order that he may be out of the way, and, on escaping 
unexpectedly from thraldom, finds the lord in his wife's drawing- 
room. Whereupon he thrashes the old lord, nearly killing him ; 
takes away the plunder which he finds on his wife's person, and 
hurries away to seek assistance as to further revenge ; — for he is 
determined to shoot the marquis, or to be shot. He goes to one 
Captain Macmurdo, who is to act as his second, and there he pours 
out his heart. " You don't know how fond I was of that one," 
Rawdon said, half-inarticulately. "Damme, 1 followed her like a 
footman ! I gave up everything I had to her. I'm a beggar because 
I would marry her. By Jove, sir, I've pawned my own watch to 
get her anything she fancied. And she — she's been making a 
purse for herself all the time, and grudged me a hundred pounds 
to get me out of quod ! " His friend alleges that the wife may be 
innocent after all. " It may be so," Rawdon exclaimed, sadly ; 
but this don't look very innocent ! " And he showed the captain 
the thousand-pound note which he had found in Becky's pocket- 
book. 

But the marquis can do better than fight ; and Rawdon, in spite 
of his true love, can do better than follow the quarrel up to his 
own undoing. The marquis, on the spur of the moment, gets the 
lady's husband appointed governor of Coventry Island, with a 
salary of three thousand pounds a year ; and poor Rawdon at last 
condescends to accept the appointment. He will not see his wife 
again, but he makes her an allowance out of his income. 

In arranging all this, Thackeray is enabled to have a side blow 
at the British way of distributing patronage — for the favour of 
which he was afterwards himself a candidate. He quotes as 



THACKERAY. 67 

follows from The Royalist newspaper: " We hear that the govern- 
orship " — of Coventry Island — " has been offered to Colonel Raw- 
don Crawley, C.B., a distinguished Waterloo officer. We need 
not only men of acknowledged bravery, but men of administrative 
talents to superintend the affairs of our colonies ; and we have no 
doubt that the gentleman selected by the Colonial Office to fill the 
lamented vacancy which has occurred at Coventry Island is ad- 
mirably calculated for the post." The reader, however, is aware 
that the officer in question cannot write a sentence or speak two 
words correctly. 

Our heroine's adventures are carried on much further, but 
they cannot be given here in detail. To the end she is the same 
— utterly false, selfish, covetous, and successful. To have made 
such a woman really in love would have been a mistake. Her 
husband she likes best — because he is, or was, her own. But there 
is no man so foul, so wicked, so unattractive, but that she can 
fawn over him for money and jewels. There are women to whom 
nothing is nasty, either in person, language, scenes, actions, or prin- 
ciple — and Becky is one of them ; and yet she is herself attractive. 
A most wonderful sketch, for the perpetration of which all Thack- 
eray's power of combine dindignation and humour was necessary! 

The story of Amelia and her two lovers, George Osborne and 
Captain, or, as he came afterwards to be. Major, and Colonel 
Dobbin, is less interesting, simply because goodness, and eulogy 
are less exciting than wickedness and censure. Amelia is a true, 
honest-hearted, thoroughly English young woman, who loves her 
love because he is grand — to her eyes — and loving him, loves him 
with all her heart. Readers have said that she is silly, only 
because she is not heroic. I do not know that she is more silly 
than many young ladies whom we who are old have loved in our 
youth, or than those whom our sons are loving at the present time. 
Readers complain of Amelia because she is absolutely true to 
nature. There are no Raffaellistic touches, no added graces, no 
divine romance. She is feminine all over, and British — loving, 
true, thoroughly unselfish, yet with a taste for having things com- 
fortable, forgiving, quite capable of jealousy, but prone to be ap- 
peased at once, at the first kiss ; quite convinced that her lover, 
her husband, her children are the people in all the world to whom 
the greatest consideration is due. Such a one is sure to be the 
dupe of a Becky Sharp, should a Becky Sharp come in her way — 
as is the case with so many sweet Amelias whom we have known. 
But in a matter of love she is sound enough and sensible enough 
— and she is as true as steel. I know no trait in Amelia which a 
man would be ashamed to find in his own daughter. 

She marries her George Osborne, who, to tell the truth of him, 
is but a poor kind of fellow, though he is a brave soldier. He 
thinks much of his own person, and is selfish. Thackeray puts^ 
in a touch or two here and there by which he is made to be odious. 
He would rather give a present to himself than to the girl who 
loved him. Nevertheless, when her father is ruined he marries 



68 THACKERAY. 

her, and he fights bravely at Waterloo, and is killed. " No more 
firing was heard at Brussels. The pursuit rolled miles away. 
Darkness came down on the field and the city; and Amelia was 
praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet 
through his heart." 

Then follows the long courtship of Dobbin, the true hero — he 
who has been the friend of George since their old school-days ; 
who has lived with him and served him, and has also loved Amelia. 
But he has loved her — as one man may love another — solely with 
a view to the profit of his friend. He has known all along that 
George and Amelia have been engaged to each other as boy and 
girl. George would have neglected her, but Dobbin would not 
allow it. George would have jilted the girl who loved him, but 
Dobbin would not let him. He had nothing to get for himself, 
but loving her as he did, it was the work of his life to get for her 
all that she wanted. 

George is shot at Waterloo, and then come fifteen years of 
widowhood — fifteen years during which Becky is carrying on her 
manoeuvres — fifteen years during which Amelia cannot bring her- 
self to accept the devotion of the old captain, who becomes at last 
a colonel. But at the end she is won. "The vessel is in port. 
He has got the prize he has been trying for all his life. The bird 
has come in at last. There it is, with its head on its shoulder, 
billing and cooing clean up to his heart, with soft, outstretched 
fluttering wings. This is what he has asked for every day and 
hour for eighteen years. This is what he has pined after. Here 
it is — the summit, the end, the last page of the third volume." 

The reader as he closes the book has on his mind a strong con- 
viction, the strongest possible conviction, that among men George 
is as weak and Dobbin as noble as any that he has met in literature ; 
and that among women Amelia is as true and Becky as vile as any 
he has encountered. Of so m.uch he will be conscious. In addi- 
tion to this he will unconsciously have found that every page he 
has read will have been of interest to him. There has been no 
padding, no longueurs ; every bit will have had its weight with him. 
And he will find too at the end, if he will think of it — though 
readers, I fear, seldom think much of this in regard to books they 
have read — that the lesson taught in every page has been good. 
There may be details of evil painted so as to disgust — painted 
almost to plainly — but none painted so as to allure. 



THACKERAY. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. 

The absence of the heroic was, in Thackeray, so palpable to 
Thackeray himself that in his original preface to Pendennis, when 
he began to be aware that his reputation was made, he tells his 
pubhc what they may expect and what they may not, and makes his 
joking complaint of the readers of his time because they will not 
endure with patience the true picture of <&. natural man, " Even 
the gentlemen of our age," he says — adding that the story of Pen- 
dennis is an attempt to describe one of them, just as he is — "even 
those we cannot show as they are v/ith the notorious selfishness of 
their time and their education. Since the author of Tom Joftes was 
buried, no writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict 
to his utmost power a man. We must shape him, and give him a 
certain conventional temper." Then he rebukes his audience be^ 
cause they will not listen to the truth. " You will not hear what 
moves in the real world, what passes in society, in the clubs, col- 
leges, mess-rooms — what is the life and talk of your sons." You 
want the Raffaellistic touch, or that of some painter of horrors 
equally removed from the truth. I tell you how a man really does 
act— as did Fielding with Tom Jones — but it ^<^q& not satisfy you. 
You will not sympathise with this young man of mine, this Pen- 
dennis, because he is neither angel nor imp. If it be so, let it be 
so. I will not paint for you angels or imps, because I do not see 
them. The young man of the day, whom I do see, and of whom \ 
know the inside and the out thoroughly, him I have painted for 
you ; and here he is, whether you like the picture or not. This is 
what Thackeray meant, and, having this in his mind, he produced 
Pen dennis. 

The object of a novel should be to instruct in morals while it 
amuses. I cannot think but that every novelist who has thought 
much of his art will have realised as much as that for himself. 
Whether this may best be done by the transcendental or by the 
common-place is the question which it more behoves the reader 
than the author to answer, because the author may be fairly sure 
that he who can do the one will not, probably cannot, do the other. 
If a lad be only five feet high, he does not try to enlist m. the 
Guards. Thackeray complains that many ladies have " remon- 
strated and subscribers left him," because of his realistic tendency. 
Nevertheless he has gone on with his work, and, in PendenniSf has 



70 



THACKERAY. 



painted a young man as natural as Tom Jones. Had he expended 
himself in the attempt, he could not have drawn a Master of 
Ravenswood. 

It has to be admitted that Pendennis is not a fine fellow. He 
is not as weak, as selfish, as untrustworthy as that George Osborne 
whom Amelia married in Vaiiity Fair j but nevertheless, he is weak, 
and selfish, and untrustworthy. He is not such a one as a father 
would wish to see his son, or a mother to welcome as a lover for 
her daughter. But then, fathers are so often doomed to find their 
sons-^ot all that they wish, and mothers to see their girls falling in 
love with young men who are not Paladins. In our individual lives 
we are contented to endure an admixture of evil, which we should 
resent if imputed to us in the general. We presume ourselves to 
be truth-speaking, noble in our sentiments, generous in our actions, 
modest and unselfish, chivalrous and devoted. But we forgive and 
pass over in silence a few delinquencies among ourselves. What 
bo}^ at school ever is a coward — in the general ? What gentleman 
ever tells a lie ? What young lady is greedy ? We take it for 
granted, as though tliey were fixed rules in life, that our boys from 
our public schools look us in the face and are manly ; that our 
gentlemen tell the truth as a matter of course ; and that our young 
ladies are refined and unselfish. Thackeray is always protesting 
that it is not so, and that no good is to be done by blinking the 
truth. He knows that we have our little home experiences. Let 
"us have the facts out, and mend what is bad if we can. This novel 
of Pe7tdeniiis is one of his loudest protests to this effect. 

I will not attempt to tell the story of Pendennis, how his mother 
loved him, how he first came to be brought up together with Laura 
Bell, how he thrashed the other boys when he was a boy, and how 
he fell in love with Miss Fotheringay, nee Costigan, and was de- 
termined to marry her while he was still a hobbledehoy, how he 
went up to Boniface, that well-known college at Oxford, and there 
did no good, spending money which he had not got, and learning 
to gamble. The English gentleman, as we know, never lies ; but 
Pendennis is not quite truthful ; when the college tutor, thinking 
that he hears the rattling of dice, makes his way into Pen's room, 
Pen and bis two companions are found with three Homers before 
them, and Pen asks the tutor with great gravity : " What was the 
present condition of the river Scamander, and whether it was nav- 
igable or no ? " He tells his mother that^ during a certain vacation 
he must stay up and read, instead of coming home — but, never- 
theless, he goes up to London to amuse himself. The reader is- 
soon made to understand that, though Pen may be a fine gentle- 
man, be is not trustworthy. But he repents and comes home, and 
kisses his mother ; only, alas ! he will always be kissing somebody 
else also. 

The story of the Amorys and the Claverings, and tl>9t wonder- 
ful French cook M. Alcide Miroboiant, forms one of those delight- 
ful digressions which Thackeray scatters through his novels 
rather than weaves into them. They generally have but little to 



THACKERAY. yi 

do with the story itself, and are brought ift only as giving scope 
for some incident to the real hero or heroine. But in this digression' 
Pen is very much concerned indeed, for he is brought to the very 
verge of matrimony with that peculiarly disagreeable lady Miss 
Amory. He does escape at last, but only within a few pages of 
the end, when we are made unhappy by the lady's victory over 
that poor young sinner Foker, v/ith whom we have all come to 
sympathise, in spite of his vulgarity and fast propensities. She 
would to the last fain have married Pen, in whom she beheves, think- 
ing that he would make a name for her. '* II me faut des emotions," 
says Blanche. Whereupon the author, as he leaves her, explains 
the nature of this Miss Amory's feehngs. " For this young lady 
was not able to carry out any emotion to the full, but had a sham 
enthusiasm, a sham hatred, a sham love, a sham taste, a sham 
grief; each of which flared and shone very vehemently for an 
instant, but subsided and gave place to the next sham emotion." 
Thackeray, when he drew this portrait, must certainly have had 
some special young lady in his view. But though we are made 
unhappy for Foker, Foker too escapes at last, and Blanche, with 
her emotions, marries that very doubtful nobleman Comte- Mont- 
more nci de Vakntinois. 

But all this of Miss Amory is but an episode. The purport of 
the story is the way in which the hero is made to enter upon the 
world, subject as he has been to the sweet teaching of his mother, 
and subject as he is made to be to the worldly lessons of his old 
uncle the major. Then he is ill, and nearly dies, and his mother 
comes up to nurse him. And there is his friend Warrington, of 
whose family down in Suffolk we shall have heard something when 
we have read The Virginians — one, I think, of the finest characters, 
as it is certainly one of the most touching, that Thackeray ever 
drew. Warrington, and Pen's mother, and Laura are our hero's 
better angels — angels so good as to make us wonder that a creature 
so weak should have had such angels about him ; though we are 
driven to confess that their affection and loyalty for him are 
natural. There is a melancholy beneath the roughness of War- 
rington, and a feminine softness combined with the .reticent 
manliness of the man, which have endeared him to readers beyond 
perhaps any character in the book. Major Pendennis has become 
immortal. Selfish, worldly, false, padded, caring altogether for 
things mean and poor in themselves ; still the reader likes him. 
It is not quite all for himself. To Pen he is good — to Pen, who 
is the head of his family, and to come after him as the Pendennis 
of the day. To Pen and to Pen's mother he is beneficent after 
his lights. In whatever he undertakes, it is so contrived that the 
reader shall in some degree sympathise with him. And so it is 
with poor old Costigan, the drunken Irish captain, Miss Fotherin- 
gay's papa. He was not a pleasant person. " We have witnessed 
the deshabille of Major Pendennis," says our author; "will any 
one wish to be valet-de-chambre to our other hero, Costigan ? It 
would seem that the captain, before issuing from his bedroom. 



72 



THACKERAY. 



scented himself with ot'to of whisky." Yet there is a kindliness' 
about him which softens our hearts, though in truth he is very 
careful that the kindness shall always be shown to himself. 

Among these people Pen makes his way to the end of the novel, 
coming near to shipwreck on various occasions, and always deserv- 
ing the shipwreck which he has almost encountered. Then there 
will arise the question whether it might not have been better that 
he should be altogether shipwrecked, rather than housed comfort- 
ably with such a wife as Laura, and left to that enjoyment of hai> 
piness forever after, which is the normal heaven prepared for 
heroes and heroines who have done their work well through three 
volumes. It is almost the only instance in all Thackeray's works in 
which this state of bliss is reached. George Osborne, who is the 
beautiful lover in Vanity Fair., is killed almost before our eyes, on 
the field of battle, and we feel that Nemesis has with justice taken 
hold of him. Poor old Dobbin does marry the widow, after fifteen 
years of further service, when we know him to be a middle-aged 
man and her a middle-aged woman. That glorious Paradise of 
which I have spoken requires a freshness which can hardly be at- 
tributed to the second marriage of a widow who has been fifteen 
years mourning for her first husband. Clive Newcome, " the first 
young man," if we may so call him, of the novel which I shall men- 
tion just now, is carried so far beyond his matrimonial elysium that 
we are allowed to see too plainly how far from true may be those 
promises of hymeneal happiness forever after. The cares of mar- 
ried life have setttled down heavily upon his young head before we 
leave him. He not only marries, but loses his wife, and is left a 
melancholy widower with his son. Esmond and Beatrix certainly 
reach no such elysium as that of which we are speaking. But Pen, 
who surely deserved a Nemesis, though perhaps not one so black 
as that demanded by George Osborne's delinquencies, is treated as 
though he had been passed through the fire, and had come out — if 
not pure gold, still gold good enough for goldsmiths. " And what 
sort of a husband will this Pendennis be ? " This is the question 
asked by the author himself at the end of the novel ; feeling, no 
doubt, some hesitation as to the justice of what he had just done. 
" And what sort of a husband will this Pendennis be ? " many a 
reader will ask, doubting the happiness of such a marriage and the 
future of Laura. The querists are referred to that lady herself, 
who, seeing his faults and wayward moods — seeing and owning that 
there are better men than he — loves him always with the most 
constant affection. The assertion could be made with perfect con- 
fidence, but is not to the purpose. That Laura's affection should 
be constant, no one would doubt; but more than that is wanted for 
happiness. How about Pendennis and his constancy ? 

The Ne'wcomes,-^h.\Q\\ I bracket in this chapter with Peridenitis, 
was not written till after Esmond., and appeared between that novel 
and The Virginians., which was a sequel to Esinond. It is sui> 
posed to be edited by Pen, whose own adventures we have just 
completed, and is commenced by that celebrated night passed by 



THACKERAY. 73 

Colonel Newcome and his boy Clive at the Cave of Harmony, dur- 
ing which the colonel is at first so pleasantly received and so ge- 
nially entertained, but from which he is at last banished, indignant 
at the iniquities of our drunken old friend Captain Costigan, with 
whom we had become intimate in Pen's own memoirs. The boy 
Clive is described as being probably about sixteen. At the end of 
the story he has run through the adventures of his early life, and is 
left a melancholy man, a widower,^ one who has suffered the ex- 
tremity of misery from a stepmother, and who is wrapped up in the 
only son that is left to him — as had been the case with his father 
at the beginning of the novel. The Newco?nes, therefore, like 
Thackeray's other tales, is rather a slice from^ the biographical 
memoirs of a family, than a romance or novel in itself. 

It is full of satire from the first to the last page. Every word 
of it seems to have been written to show how vile and poor a place 
this world is ; how prone men are to deceive, how prone to be de- 
ceived. There is a scene in which " his Excellency Rummun Loll, 
otherwise his Highness Rummun Loll," is introduced to Colonel 
Newcome — or rather presented — for the two men had known each 
other before. All London was talking of Rummun Loll, talcing 
him for an Indian prince, but the colonel, who had served in India, 
knew better. Rummun Loll was no more than a merchant, who 
had made a precarious fortune by doubtful means. All the girls, 
nevertheless, are running after his Excellency. " He's known to 
have two wives already iii India," says Barnes Newcome; "but, by 
gad, for a settlement, I believe some of the girls here would marry 
him." We have a delightful illustration of the London girls, with 
their bare necks and shoulders, sitting round Rummun Loll and 
worshipping him as he reposes on his low settee. Thefe are a dozen 
of them so enchanted that the men who wish to get a sight of the 
Rummun are quite kept at a distance. This is satire on the women. 
A few pages on we come upon a clergyman who is no more real 
than Rummun Loll The clergyman, Charles Honeyman, had mar- 
ried the colonel's sister and had lost his wife, and now the broth- 
ers-in-law meet. " ' Poor, poor Emma ! ' exclaimed the ecclesiastic, 
casting his eyes towards the chandelier and passing a white cam- 
bric pocket-handkerchief gracefully before them. No man in 
London understood the ring business or the pocket-handkerchief 
business^ better, or smothered his emotion more beautifully. ' In 
the gayest moments, in the giddiest throng of fashion, the thoughts 
of the past will rise ; the departed will be among us still. But this 
is not the strain wherewith to greet the friend newly arrived on our 
shores. How it rejoices me to behold you in old England!*" 
And so the satirist goes on with Mr. Honeyman the clergyman. 
Mr. Honeyman the clergyman has been already mentioned, in that 
extract made in our first chapter from Lovel the Widower. It was 
he who assisted another friend, "with his wheedling tongue," in 
inducing Thackeray to purchase that "neat little literary paper" — ■ 
called then The Museum., but which was in truth The National 
Standard. In describing Barnes Newcome, the colonel's relative, 



^4 THACKERAY. 

Thackeray in the same scene attacks the sharpness of the young 
men of business of the present day. There were, or were to be, 
some transactions with Rummun Loll, and Barnes Newcome, be- 
ing in doubt, asks the colonel a question or two as to the certainty 
of the Rummun's money, much to the colonel's disgust. " Th^ 
young man of business had dropped his drawl or his languor, and 
was speaking quite unaffectedly, good-naturedly, and selfishly. Had 
you talked to him for a week you would not have made him under- 
stand the scorn and loathing with which the colonel regarded him. 
Here was a young fellow as keen as the oldest curmudgeon — a lad 
with scarce a beard to his chin, that would pursue his bond as 
rigidly as Shylock." " Barnes Newcome never missed a church," 
he goes on, "or dressing for dinner. He never kept a tradesman 
waiting for his money. He seldom drank too much, and never 
was late for business, or huddled over his toilet, however brief 
his sleep or severe his headache. In a word, he was as scrupulous- 
ly whited as any sepulchre in the whole bills of mortality." Thack- 
eray had lately seen some Barnes Newcome when he wrote that 

It is all satire; but there is generally a touch of pathos even 
through the satire. It is satire when Miss Quigley, the governess 
in Park Street, falls in love with the old colonel after some dim 
fashion of her own. " When she is walking with her little charges 
in the Park, faint signals of welcome appear on her wan cheeks. 
She knows the dear colonel amidst a thousand horsemen." The 
colonel had drunk a glass of wine with her after his stately fashion, 
and the foolish old maid thinks too much of it Then we are told 
how she knits purses for him, '' as she sits alone in the school- 
room — high up in that lone house, when the little ones are long 
since asleep — before her dismal little tea-tray, and her httle desk 
containing her mother's letters and her mementoes of home." 
Miss Quigley is an ass ; but we are made to sympathise entirely 
with the ass, because of that morsel of pathos as to her mother's 
letters. 

Clive Newcome, our hero, who is a second Pen, but a better fel- 
low, is himself a satire on young men — on young men that are idle 
and ambitious at the same time. He is a painter ; but, instead of 
being proud of his art, is half ashamed of it — because not being in- 
dustrious he has not, while yet young, learned to excel. He is 
'•' doing" a jDortrait of Mrs. Pendennis, Laura, and thus speaks of 
his business; " No 666 " — he is supposed to be quoting frdfn the 
catalogue of the Royal Academy for the year — "No. 666. Portrait 
of Joseph Muggins, Esq., Newcome, George Street. No. 979. 
Portrait of Mrs. Muggins on her gray pony, Newcome. No. 579. 
Portrait of Joseph Muggins, Esq.'s dog Toby, Newcome. This is 
what I am fit for. These are the victories I have set myself on 
achieving. Oh, Mrs- Pendennis ! isn't it humiliating ? Why isn't 
there a war ? Why haven't I a genius ? There is a painter who 
lives hard by, and who begs me to come and look at his work. He 
is in the Muggins line too. He gets his canvases with a good light 
upon them; excludes the contemplation of other objects; stands 



THACKERAY. 75 

beside his picture in an attitude himself ; and thinks that he and 
they are masterpieces. Oh me, what drivelling wretches we are ! 
Fame ! — except that of just the one or two — what's the use of it ? " 
In all of which Thackeray ^s speaking his own feelings about him- 
self as well as the world at large. What's the use of it all? Oh 
vanitas vanitatum ! Oh vanity and vexation of spirit ! " So 
Clive Newcome," he says afterwards, '^ lay on a bed of down and 
tossed and tumbled there. He went to fine dinners, and sat silent 
over them ; rode fine horses, and black care jumped up behind the 
moody horseman." As I write this I have before me a letter from 
Thackeray to a friend describing his own success when Vanity Fair 
was coming out, full of the same feeling. He is making money, but 
he spends it so fast that he never has any; and as for the opinions 
expressed on his books, he cares little for what he hears. There 
was always present to him a feeling of black care seated behind the 
horseman — -and would have been equally so had there been no real 
care present to him. A sardonic melancholy was the characteristic 
most common to him — which, however, was relieved by an always 
present capacity for instant frolic. It was these attributes com- 
bined which made him of all satirists the most humorous, and of all 
humorists the most satirical. It was these that produced the 
Osbornes, the Dobbins, the Pens, the Clives, and the Newcomes, 
whom, when he loved them the most, he could not save himself from 
describing as mean and unworthy. A somewhat heroic hero of 
romance — such a one, let us say, as Waverley, or Lovel in The Anti- 
quary^ or Morton in Old Mortality — was revolting to him, as lack- 
ing those foibles which human nature seemed to him to demand. 

The story ends with two sad tragedies, neither of which would 
have been demanded by the story, had not such sadness been 
agreeable to the author's own idiosyncrasy. The one is the ruin 
of the old colonel's fortunes, he having allowed himself to be en- 
ticed into bubble speculations ; and the other is the loss of all haj)- 
piness, and even comfort, to Clive the hero, by the abominations 
of his mother-in-law. The woman is so iniquitous, and so tremen- 
dous in her iniquities, that she rises to tragedy. Who does not 
know Mrs. Mack the Campaigner ? Why at the end of his long 
story should Thackeray have married his hero to so lackadaisical 
a heroine as poor little Rosey, or brought on the stage such a she- 
demon as Rosey's nwther ? But there is the Campaigner in all 
her vigour, a marvel of strength of composition — one of the most 
vividly drawn characters in fiction — but a woman so odious that 
one is induced to doubt whether she should have be©n depicted. 

The other tragedy is altogether of a different kind, and though 
unnecessary to the story, and contrary to that practice of story- 
telling which seems to demand that calamities to those personages 
with whom we are to sympathise should not be brought in at the 
close of a work of fiction, is so beautifully told that no lover of 
Thackeray's work would be willing to part with it. The old colonel, 
as we have said, is ruined by speculation, and in his ruin is brought 
to accept the alms of the brotherhood of the Grey Friars. Then 



76 



THACKERAY. 



we are introduced to the Charter House, at which, as most of us 
know, there stili exists a brotherhood of the kind. He dons the 
gown — this old colonel, who had always been comfortable in his 
means, and latterly apparently, rich — and occupies the single room, 
and eats the doled bread, and among his poor brothers sits in the 
chapel of his order. The description is perhaps as fine as any- 
thing that Thackeray ever did. The gentleman is still the gentle- 
man, with all the pride of gentry; — but not the less is he the hum- 
ble bedesman, aware that he is hving upon charity, not made to 
grovel by any sense of shame, but knowing that, though his normal 
pride may be left to him, an outward demeanour of humility is be- 
fitting. 

And then he dies. " At the usual'evening hour the chapel bell 
began to toll, and Thomas Newcome's hands outside the bed feebly 
beat time — and just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile 
shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly 
said, 'Adsum' — and fell back. It was the word we used at school 
when names were called ; and, lo, he whose heart was as that of a 
little child had answered to his name, and stood in the presence 
of his Maker I " 



THACKERAY. 



77 



CHAPTER V. 

ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 

The novel with which we are now going to deal I regard as the 
greatest work that Thackeray did. Though I do not hesitate to 
compare himself with himself, I will make no comparison be- 
tween him and others ; I therefore abstain from assigning to Es^ 
mond any special niche among prose fictions in the En^ish lan- 
guage, but Iraiik it so high as to justify me in placing him among 
the small number of the highest class of English novelists. Much 
as I think of Barry Lyndon and Vanity Fair, I cannot quite say this 
ofi them ; but, as a chain is not stronger than its weakest link, so 
is a poet, or a dramatist, or a novelist to be placed in no lower 
level than that which he has attained by his highest sustained 
flight. The excellence which has been reached here Thackeray 
achieved, without doubt, by giving a greater amount of forethought 
to the work he had before him than had been his wont. When we 
were young we used to be told, in our house at home, that " el- 
bow-grease " was the one essential necessary to getting a tough 
piece of work well done. If a mahogany table was to be made to 
shine, it was elbow-grease that the operation needed. Forethought 
is the elbow-grease whicha novelist — or poet — or dramatist — re- 
quires. It is not only his plot that has to be turned and re-turned 
in his mind, not his plot chiefly, but he has to make himself sure 
of his situations, of his characters, of his effects, so that when the 
time comes for hitting the nail he may know where to hit it on the 
head — so that he may himself understand the passion, the calm- 
ness, the virtues, the vices, the rewards and punishments which he 
means to explain to others — so that his proportions shall be cor- 
rect, and he be saved from the absurdity of devoting two-thirds of 
his book to the beginning,or two-thirds to the completion of his task. 
It is from want of this special labour, more frequently than from in- 
tellectual deficiency, that the tellers of stories fail so often to hit 
their nails on the head. To think of a story is much harder work than 
to write it. The author can sit down with the pen in his hand for a 
given time, and produce a certain number of words. That is compar- 
atively easy, and if he have a conscience in regard to his task, work 
will be done regularly. But to think it over as you lie in bed, or walk 
about, or sit cosily over your fire, to turn it all in your thoughts, and 
make the things fit — that requires elbow-grease of the mind. The 



78 THACKERAY. 

arrangement of the words is as though you were walking simply 
along a road. The arrangement of your story is as though you 
were carrying a sack of flour while you walked. Fielding had car- 
ried his sack of flour before he wrote Tom Jones^ and Scott his 
before he produced Ivanhoe. So had Thackeray done — a very 
heavy sack of flour — in creating Esmond. In Vanity Fair, in 
Fendennis, and in The Newcomes, there was more of that mere 
wandering in which no heavy burden was borne. The richness of 
the author's mind, the beauty of his language, his imagination and 
perception of character, are all there. For that which was lovely 
he has shown his love, and for the hateful his hatred ; but, never- 
theless, they are comparatively idle books. His only work, as far 
as I can judge them, in which there is no touch of idleness, is Es- 
mond. Barry Lyndon is consecutive, and has the Well-sustained 
purpose of exhibiting a finished rascal ; but Barry Lyndon is not 
quite the same from beginning to end. All his full-fledged 
novels, except Esmond, contain rather strings of incidents and 
memoirs of individuals, than a completed story. But Esmond is a 
whole from beginning to end, with its tale well told, its purpose 
developed, its moral brought home — and its nail hit well on the 
head and driven in. 

I told Thackeray once that it was not only his best work, but 
so much the best, that there was none second to it. " That was 
what I intended," he said, " but I have fa.iled. Nobody reads it. 
After all, what does it matter .? " he went on after awhile. " If 
they like anything, one ought to be satisfied. After all, Esmond 
was a prig." Then he laughed a,nd changed the subject, not 
caring to dwell on thoughts painful to him. The elbow-grease of 
thinking was always distasteful to him, and had no doubt been so 
when he conceived and carried out this work. 

To the ordinary labour necessary for such a novel he added 
very much by his resolution to write it in a style different, not only 
from that which he had made his own, but from that also which 
belonged to the time. He had devoted himself to the reading of' 
the literature of Queen Anne's reign, and having chosen to throw 
his story into that period, and to create in it personages who were 
to be peculiarly concerned with the period, he resolved to use as 
the vehicle for his story the forms of expression then prevalent. 
No one who has not tried it can understand how great is the diffi- 
culty of mastering a phase of one's own language other than that 
which habit has made familiar. To write in another language, if 
the language be sufficiently known, is a much less arduous under- 
taking. The lad who attempts to write his essay in Ciceronian 
Latin struggles to achieve a style which is not indeed common to 
him, but is more common than any other he has become acquainted 
with in that tongue. But Thackeray in his work had always to 
remember his Swift, his Steele, and his Addison,- and to forget at 
the same time the modes of expression which the day had adopted. 
VVhet'.:_r he asked advice on the subject, I do not know. But I 
feel sure that if he did he must have been counselled against it 



THACKERAY. 



79 



Let my reader think what advice he would give to any writer on 
such a subject. Probably he asked no advice, and would have 
taken none. No doubt he found himself, at first imperceptibly, 
gliding into a phraseology which had attractions for his ear, and 
then probably was so charmed with the peculiarly masculine forms 
of sentences which thus became familiar to him, that he thought it 
would be almost as difficult to drop them altogether as altogether 
to assume the use of them. And if he could do so successfully, how 
great would be the assistance given to the local colouring which is 
needed for a novel in prose, the scene of which is thrown far back 
from the writer's period ! Were I to write a poem about Coeur de 
Lion, I should not mar my poem by using the simple language of 
the day ; but if 1 write a prose story of the time, I cannot altogether 
avoid some attempt at far-away quaintnesses in language. To call 
a purse a " gypsire," and to begin your little speeches with "Marry 
come up," or to finish them with " Quotha," are but poor attempts. 
But even they have had their effect. Scott did the best he could 
with his Coeur de Lion. When we look to it we find that it was 
but little ; though in his hands it passed for much. " By my troth," 
said the knight, " thou hast sung well and heartily, and in high 
praise of thine order." We doubt whether he achieved any similarity 
to the language of the time ; but still, even in the little which he 
attempted, there was something of the picturesque. But how 
much more would be done if in very truth the whole language of a 
story could be thrown with correctness into the form of expression 
used at the time depicted 1 

It was this that Thackeray tried in his Esmond^ and he has 
done it almost without a flaw. The time in question is near enough 
to us, and the literature sufficiently famihar to enable us to judge. 
Whether folk swore by their troth in the days of King Richard L 
we do not know, but when we read Swift's letters, and Addison's 
papers, or Defoe's novels, we do catch the veritable sounds of 
Queen Anne's age, and can say for ourselves whether Thackeray 
has caught them correctly or not. No reader can doubt that he 
has done so. Nor is the reader ever struck with the affectation of 
an assumed dialect. The words come as though they had been 
written naturally — though not natural to the middle of the nine- 
teenth century. It was a tour de force, and successful as such a 
tour de force so seldom is. But though Thackeray was successful 
in adopting the tone he wished to assume, he never quite succeeded, 
as far as my ear can judge, in altogether dropping it again. 

And yet it has to be remembered that though Esmond deals 
with the times of Queen Anne, and " copies the language "of the 
time, as Thackeray himself sa3^s in the dedication, the story is not 
supposed to have been written till the reign of George 11. Esmond 
in his narrative speaks of Fielding and Hogarth, who did their best 
work under George II. The idea is that Henry Esmond, the hero, 
went out to Virginia after the events told, and there wrote the 
memoir in the form of an autobiography. The estate of Castlewood, 
in Virginia, had been given to the Esmond family by Charles II. ; 



8o THACKERAY, 

and this Esmond, our hero, finding that expatriation would best 
suit both his domestic happiness and his political difficulties — as 
the reader of the book will understand might be the case — settles 
himself in the colony, and there writes the history of his early life. 
He retains the manners, and with the manners the language of his 
youth. He lives among his own people, a country gentleman with 
a broad domain, mixing but little with the world beyond, and remains 
an English gentleman of the time of Queen Anne. The story is 
continued in The Virginians^ the name given to a record of two 
lads who were grandsons of Harry Esmond, whose names are 
Warrington, Before The Virginians appeared we had already be- 
come acquainted with a scion of that family, the friend of Arthur 
Pendennis, a younger son of Sir Miles Warrington, of Suffolk. 
Henry Esmond's daughter had in a previous generation married a 
younger son of t^e then baronet. This is mentioned now to show 
the way in which Thackeray's mind worked afterwards upon the 
details and characters which he had originated in Esmond. 

It is not my purpose to tell the story here^ but rather to explain 
the way in which it is written, to show how it differs from other 
stories, and thus to explain its effect. Harry Esmond, who tells the 
story, is of course the hero. There are two heroines who equally 
command our sympathy — Lady Castlewood, the wife of Harry's 
kinsman, and her daughter Beatrix. Thackeray himself declared 
the man to be a prig, and he was not altogether wrong. Beatrix, 
with whom throughout the whole book he is in love, knew him well. 
" Shall I be frank with you, Harry," she says, when she is engaged 
to another suitor, '< and say that if you had not been down on your 
knees and so,humble, youmight have fared better with me ? A 
woman of my spirit, cousin, is to be won by gallantry, and not by 
sighs and rueful faces. All the time you are worshipping and 
singing hymns to me, I know very well I am no goddess." And 
again : " As for you, you want a woman to bring your slippers and 
cap, and to sit at vour feet and cry, O caro, caro ! O bravo ! whilst 
you read your Shakespeares and Miltons and stuff." He was a prig, 
and the girl he loved knew him, and being quite of another way 
of thinking herself, would have nothing to say to him in the way of 
love. But without somethiiv/ of the aptitudes of a prig the charac- 
ter which the author intended could not have been dra\yn. There 
was to be courage— military courage— and that propensity to fight- 
ing which the tone of the age demanded in a finished gentleman. 
Esmond, therefore, is already enough to use his sword. But at the 
same time he has to live as becomes one whose name is in some 
deo-ree under a cloud; for though he be not in truth an illegitimate 
offshoot of the noble family which is his, and though he knows that 
he is not so, still he has to'live as though he were. He becomes a 
soldier, and it was just then that our army was accustomed " to 
swear horribly in Flanders." But Esmond likes his books, and 
cannot swear or drink like other soldiers. Nevertheless he has a 
sort of liking for fast ways in others, knowing that such are the 
ways of a gallant cavaher. There is a melancholy over his 



THACKERAY. 8t 

life which makes him always, to himself and to others, much 
older than his years. He is well aware that, being as he is, 
it is impossible that Beatrix should love him. Now and then there 
is a dash of lightness about him, as thougi?. he had taught him- 
self, in his philosophy, that even sorrow may be borne with a 
smile — as though there was something in him of the Stoic's doctrine, 
which made him feel that even disappointed love should not be seen 
to wound too deep. But still, when he smiles, even when he 
indulges in some little pleasantry, there is that garb of melancholy 
over him which always makes a man a prig. But he is a gentleman 
from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. Thackeray had 
let the whole power of his intellect apply itself to a conception of 
the character of a gentleman. This man is brave, polished, gifted 
with that old-fashioned courtesy which ladies used to love, true as 
steel, loyal as faith himself, with a power of self-abnegation which 
astonishes the criticising reader when he finds such a virtue carried 
to such an extent without seeming to be unnatural. To draw the 
picture of a man, and say that lie is gifted with all the virtues, is 
easy enough — easy enough to describe him as performing all the 
virtues. The difficulty is to put your man on his legs, and make 
him move abcut, carrying his virtues with a natural ^ait, so that the 
reader shall feel that he is becoming acquainted with flesh and 
blood, not with a wooden figure. The virtues are all there with 
Henry Esmond, and the flesh and blood also, so that the reader 
believes in them. But still there is left a flavour of the character 
which Thackeray himself tasted when he called his hero a prig. 

The two heroines. Lady Castlewood and Beatrix, are mother 
and daughter, of whom the former is in love with Esmond, and the 
latter is loved by him. Fault has been found with the story, 
because of the unnatural rivalry — because it has been felt that a 
mother's solicitude for her daughter should admit of no such juxta- 
position. But the criticism has come, I think, from those who 
have failed to understand, not from those who have understood 
the tale ; not because they have read it, but because they have not 
read it, and have only looked at it or heard of it. Lady Castlewood 
is perhaps ten years older than the boy Esmond, whom she first 
finds in her husband's house, and takes as a protege ; and from 
the moment in which she finds that he is in love with her own 
daughter, she does her best to bring about a marriage between 
them. Her husband is aHve, and though he is a drunken brute— 
after the manner of lords of that time — she is thoroughly loyal to 
him. The little touches, of which the woman is herself altogether 
unconscious, that gradually turn a love for the boy into a love for 
the man, are told so delicately, that it is only at last that the reader 
perceives what has in truth happened to the woman. She is angry 
with him, grateful to him, careful over him, gradually conscious of 
all his worth, and of all that he does to her and hers, till at last her 
heart is unable to resist. But then she is a widow ; — and Beatrix 
has declared that her ambition will not allow her to marry so 
bumble a swain, and Esmond has become — as he says of himself 

6 



S2 THACKERAY. 

when he calls himself " an old gentleman " — " the guardian of all 
the family," " fit to be the grandfather of you all," 

The character of Lady Castlewood has required more delicacy 
in its manipulation than perhaps any other which Thackeray has 
drawn. There is a mixture in it of self-negation and of jealousy, 
of gratefulness of heart and of the weary thoughtfulness of age, of 
occasional sprightiness with deep melancholy, of injustice with a 
thorough appreciation of the good around her, of personal weakness 
— as shown always in her intercourse with her children, and of 
personal strength — as displayed when she vindicates the position 
of her kinsman Henry to the Duke of Hamilton, who is about to 
marry Beatrix ; — a mixture which has required a master's hand 
to trace. These contradictions are essentially feminine. Perhaps 
it must be confessed that in the unreasonableness of the woman, 
the author has intended to bear more harshly on the sex than 
it deserves. But a true woman will forgive him, because of , the 
truth of Lady Castlewood's heart. Her husband had been killed 
in a duel, and there were circumstances which had induced her at 
the moment to quarrel with Harry and to be unjust to him. He 
had been ill, and had gone away to the wars, ajid then she had 
learned the truth, and had been wretched enough. But when he 
comes back, and she sees him, by chance at first, as the anthem is 
being sung in the cathedral choir, as she is saying her prayers, her 
heart flows over with tenderness to him. " I knew you would 
come back," she said; "and to-day, Henry, in the anthem when 
they sang it — ' When the Lord turned the captivity of Zion we 
were like them that dream '- — I thought, yes, like them that dream — 
them that dream. And then it went on, ' They that sow in tears 
shall reap in joy, and he that goeth forth and weepeth shall doubt- 
less come home again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with 
him.' I looked up from the book and saw you. I was not surprised 
when I saw you. I knew you would come, my dear, and saw the 
gold sunshine round your head." And so it goes on running into 
expressions of heart-melting tenderness. And yet she herself does 
not know that her own heart is seeking" his with all a woman's love. 
She is still v/illing that he should possess Beatrix. " I would call 
you my son," she says, " sooner than the greatest prince in Europe." 
But she warns him of the nature of her own girl. " 'Tis for my 
poor Beatrix I tremble, whose headstrong will affrights me, Avhose 
jealous temper, and whose vanity no prayers of mine can cure." It 
is but very gradually that Esmond becomes aware of the truth. 
Indeed, he has not become altogether aware of it till the tale closes. 
The reader does not see that transfer of affection from the daughter 
to the mother which would fail to reach his sympathy. In the last 
page of the last chapter it is told that it is so — that Esmond mar- 
ries Lady Castlewood — but it is not told till all the incidents of the 
story have been completed. 

But of the three characters I have named, Beatrix is the one 
that has most strongly exercised the writer's powers, and will most 
interest the reader. As far as outward person is concerned, she is 



THACKERAY. 83 

very lovely — so charming that every man that comes near to her 
submits himself to her attractions and caprices. It is but rarely 
that a novelist can succeed in impressing his reader with a sense of 
female loveliness. The attempt is made so frequently — comes so 
much as a matter of course in every novel that is written, and fails 
so much as a matter of course, that the reader does not feel the 
failure. There are things which we do not expect to have done for 
us in literature, because they are done so seldom. Novehsts are 
apt to describe the rural scenes among which their characters play 
their parts, but seldom leave any impression of the places described. 
Even in poetry how often does this occur 1 The words used are 
pretty, well chosen, perhaps musical to th© ear, and in that way 
befitting; but unless the spot has violent characteristics of its own, 
such_ as Hurley's cave or the waterfall of Lodore, no striking 
portrait is left. Nor are we disappointed as we read, because 
we have not been taught to expect it to be otherwise. So it is with 
those word-painted portraits of women, which are so frequently 
given and so seldom convey any impression. Who has an idea of 
the outside look of Sophia Western, or Edith Bellenden, or even 
of Imogen, though lachimo, who described her, was so good at 
words ? A series of pictures — illustrations — as we have with 
Dickens' novels, and with Thackeray's, may leave an impression of 
a figure — though even then not often of feminine beauty. But in 
this work Thackeray has succeeded in imbuing us with a sense of 
the outside lovehness of Beatrix by the mere force of words. We 
are not only told it, but we feel that she was such a one as a man 
cannot fail to covet, even when his judgment goes against his 
choice. 

Here the judgment goes altogether against the choice. The 
girl grows up before us from her early youth till her twenty-fifth or 
twenty-sixth year, and becomes — such as her mother described 
her — one whose headlong will, whose jealousy, and whose vanity 
nothing could restrain. She has none of those soft foibles, half 
allied to virtues, by which weak women fall away into misery or 
perhaps distraction. She does not want to love or to be loved. 
She does not care to be fondled. She I'tas no longing for caresses. 
She wants to be admired — and to make use of the admiration she 
shall achieve for the material purposes of her life. She wishes to 
rise in the world; and her beauty is the sword with which she 
must open her oyster. As to her heart, it is a thing of which she 
becomes aware, only to assure herself that it must be laid aside and 
put out of the question. Now and again Esmond touches it. She 
just feels that she has a heart to be touched. But she never 
has a doubt as to her conduct in that respect. She will not allow 
her dreams of ambition to be disturbed by such folly as love. 

In all that there might be something, if not good and great, 
nevertheless grand, if her ambition, though worldly, had in it a 
touch of nobility. But this poor creature is made with her bleared 
blind eyes to fall into the very lowest depths of feminine ignobihtyl 
One lover comes after another. Harry Esmond is, of course, the 



84 THACKERAY. 

lover with whom the reader interests himself. At last there comes 
a duke — fifty years old, indeed, but with semi-royal appanages. 
As his wife she will become a duchess, with many diamonds, and 
be Her Excellency. The man is stern^ cold, and jealous ; but she 
does not doubt for a moment. She is to be Duchess of Hamilton, 
and towers already in pride of place above her mother, and her 
kinsman lover, and all her belongings. The story here, with its little 
incidents of birth, and blood, and ignoble pride, and gratified ambi- 
tion, with a dash of true feminine nobility on the part of the girl's 
mother, is such as to leave one with the impression that it has 
hardly been bea,ten in English prose fiction. Then, in the last 
moment, the duke is killed in a duel, and the news is brought to 
the girl by Esmond. She turns upon him and rebukes him harshly. 
Then she moves away, and feels in a moment that there is nothing 
left for her in this world, and that she can only throw herself upon 
devotion for consolation. " I am best in my own room and by my- 
self," she said. Her eyes were quite dry, nor did Esmond ever see 
them otherwise, save once, in respect of that grief. She gave him 
a cold hand as she went out. " Thank you, brother," she said in a 
low voice, and with a simplicity more touching than tears ; " all 
that you have said is true and kind, and I will go away and will ask 
pardon." 

But the consolation coming from devotion did not go far with 
such a one as her. We cannot rest on religion merely by saying 
that we will do so. Very speedily there comes consolation in an- 
other form. Queen Anne is on. her deathbed, and a young Stuart 
prince appears upon the scene, of whom some loyal hearts dreani 
that they can make a king. He is such as Stuarts were, and only 
walks across the novelist's canvas to show his folly and heartless- 
ness. But there is a moment in which Beatrix thinks that she may 
rise in the world to the proud place of a royal mistress. That is 
her last ambition ! That is her pride ! That is to be her glory ! 
The bleared eyes can see no clearer than that. But the mock 
prince passes away, and nothing but the disgrace of the wish re- 
mains. 

Such is the story of Esmond^ leaving with it, as does all Thack- 
eray's work, a melancholy conviction of the vanity of all things 
human. Vanitas vanitati{?n, as he wrote on the pages of the 
French lady's album, and again in one of the earlier numbers of 
The Cornhill Magazine, With much that is picturesque, much 
that is droll, much that is valuable as being a correct picture of the 
period selected, the gist of the book is melancholy throughout. It 
ends with the promise of happiness to come, but that is contained 
merely in a concluding paragraph. The one woman, during the 
course of the story, becomes a widow, with a living love in which 
she has no hope, with children for whom her fears are almost 
stronger than her affection, who never can rally herself to happi' 
ness for a moment.' The other, with all her beauty and all her 
brilliance, becomes what we have described — and marries at last 
her brother's tutor, who becomes a bishop by means of her in- 



THACKERAY. 85 

trigues. Esmond, the hero, who is compounded of all good gifts, 
after a childhood and youth tinged throughout with melancholy, 
vanishes from us, with the promise that he is to be rewarded by the 
hand of the mother of the girl he has loyed. 

And yet there is not a page in the book over which a thought- 
ful reader cannot pause with delight. The nature in it is true 
nature. Given a story thus sad, and persons thus situated, and it 
is thus that the details would follow each other, and thus that the 
people would conduct themselves. It was the tone of Thackeray's 
mind to turn away from the prospect of things joyful, and to see — 
or believe that he saw — in all human affairs, the seed of something 
base, of something which would be antagonistic to true content- 
ment. All his snobs, and all his fools, and all his knaves, come 
from the same conviction. It is not the doctrine on which our re- 
ligion is founded — though the sadness of it there is alleviated by 
the doubtful promise of a heaven ? 

Though thrice a thousand years are passed 
Since David's son, the sad and splendid, 

The weary king ecclesiast 
Upon his awful tablets penned it. 

So it was that Thackeray preached his sermori. But melan- 
choly though it be, the lesson taught in Es7nond\% salutary from 
beginning to end. The sermon truly preached is that glory can 
only come from that which is truly glorious, and that the results of 
meanness end always in the mean. No girl will be taught to wish 
to shine like Beatrix, nor will any youth be made to think that to 
gain the love of such a one it can be worth his while to expend his 
energy or his heart. 

Esmond \N2iS published in 1852. It was not till 1858, some time 
after he had returned from his lecturing tours, that he published 
the sequel called The Virginians. It was first brought out in twenty- 
four monthly numbers, and ran through the years 1858 and 1859, 
Messrs. Bradbury and Evans having been the publishers. It takes 
up by no means the story of Esjnond, and hardly the characters. 
The twin lads, who are called the Virginians, and whose name is 
Warrington, are grandsons of Esmond and his wife Lady Castle- 
wood. Their one daughter, born at the estate in Virginia, had 
married a Warrington, and the Virginians are the issue of that 
marriage. In the story, one is sent to England, there to make his 
way ; and the other is for a while supposed to have been killed by 
the Indians. How he was not killed, but after awhile comes again 
forward in the world of fiction, will be found in the story, which it 
is not our purpose to set forth here. The most interestinor part of 
the narrative is that which tells us of the later fortunes of Madame 
Beatrix — the Baroness Bernstein — the lady who had in her 3-outh 
been Beatrix Esmond, who had then condescended to become Mrs. 
Tusher, the tutor's wife, whence she rose to be the "lady" of a 
bishop, and, after the bishop had been put to rest under a load of 



86 THACKERAY. 

marble, had become the baroness — a rich old woman, courted by 

all her relatives because of her wealth. 

In The Virginians.^ as a work of art, is discovered, more strong- 
ly than had shown itself yet in any of his works, that propensity to 
wandering which came to Thackeray because of his idleness. 
Is, 1 think, to be found in every book lie ever wrote— except 
Esmond; but is here more conspicuous than it had been in his 
earlier years. Though he can settle himself down to his pen and 
ink — not always even to that without a struggle, but to that with 
sufficient burst of energy to produce a large average amount of 
work — he cannot settle himself down to the task of contriving a 
story. There have been those — and they have not been bad judges 
of hterature — who have told me that they have best liked these 
vague narratives. The mind of the man has been clearly exhibited 
in them. In them he has spoken out his thoughts, and given the 
world to know his convictions, as well as could "have been done in 
the carrying out any well-conducted plot. And though the narra- 
tives be vague, the characters are alive. In The Virginians, the 
two young men and their mother, and the other ladies with whom 
they have to deal, and especially their aunt, the Baroness Bernstein, 
are all alive. For desultory reading, for that picking up of a volume 
now and again which requires permission to forget the plot of a 
novel, this novel is admirably adapted. There is not a page of it 
vacant or dull. But he who takes it up to read as a whole, will find 
that it is the work of a desultory writer, to whom it is not unfre- 
quently difficult to remember the incidents of his own narrative. 
"■ How good it is, even as it is ! — but if he would have done his best 
for us, what might he not have done ! " This, I think, is what we 
feel when we read The Virgi?tia7ts. The author's mind has in one 
way been active enough— and powerful, as it always is; but he has 
been unable to fix it to an intended purpose, and has gone on from 
day to day furthering the difficulty he has intended to master, till 
the book, under the stress of circumstances — demands for copy and 
the like — has been completed before the difficulty has even in truth 
been encountered. 



THACKERAY, 87 



CHAPTER VI. 

Thackeray's burlesques. 

As so much of Thackeray's writing partakes of the nature of 
burlesque, it would have been unnecessary to devote a separate 
chapter to the subject, were it not that there are among his tales 
two or three so exceedingly good of their kind, coming so entirely 
up to our idea of what a prose burlesque should be, that were I to 
omit to mention them I should pass over a distinctive portion of 
our author's work. 

The volume called Burlesques, published in 1869, begins vvith 
the Novels by Eminent Hands, and Jeanies's Diary, to which I 
have already alluded. It contains also THe Tremendous Adven- 
tures of Major Gahagan, A Legend of the Rhine, and Rebecca and 
Rowena. It is of these that I will now speak. The History of 
the Next Frencn Revolution and Cox's Diary, with which the vol- 
ume is concluded, are, according to my thinking, hardly equal to 
the others ; nor are they so properly called burlesques. 

Nor will I say much of Major Gahagan, though his adventures 
are very good fun. He is a warrior^that is, of course — and he is 
one in whose wonderful narrative all that distant India can produce 
in the way of boasting, is superadded to Ireland's best efforts in 
the same line. Baron Munchausen was nothing to him ; and to 
the bare and simple miracles of the baron is joined that humour 
without which Thackeray never tells any story. This is broad 
enough, no doubt, but is still humour — as when the major tells us 
that he always kept in his own apartment a small store of gun- 
powder; '"always keeping it under my bed, with a candle burning 
for fear of accidents." Or when he describes his courage ; " 1 was 
running — running as the brave stag before the hounds — running, 
as I have done a great number of times in my life, when there was 
no help for it but a run." Then he tells us of his digestion. 
'- Once in Spain I ate the leg of a horse, and was so eager to 
swallow this morsel, that I bolted the shoe as well as the hoof, and 
never felt the shghtest inconvenience from either." He storms a 
citadel, and has only a snuff-box given him for his reward. " Never 
mind," says Major Gahagan ; "wlien they want me to storm a fort 
again, I shall know better." By wliich we perceive that the major 
remembered his Horace, and had in his mind the soldier who had 
lost his purse. But the major's adventures, excellent as they itre, 



88 THACKERAY. 

lack the continued interest which is attached to the two following 
stories. 

Of what nature is the Legend of the Rhine^ we learn from the 
commencement. " It was in the good old days of chivalry, when 
every mountain that bathes its shadow in the Rhine had its castle; 
not inhabited as now by a few rats and owls, nor covered with moss 
and wallflowers and funguses and creeping ivy. No, no ; where the 
ivy now clusters there grew strong portcullis and bars of steel ; where 
the wallflowers now quiver in the ramparts there were silken banners 
embroidered with wonderful heraldry; men-at-arms marched where 
now you shall only see a bank of moss or a hideous black cham- 
pignon ; and in the place of the rats and owlets, I warrant me there 
were ladies and knights to revel in the great halls, and to feast and 
dance, and to make love there." So. that we know well before- 
hand of what kind will this story be. It will be a pure romance — 
burlesqued. " Ho seneschal, fill me a cup of hot liquor ; put 
sugar in it, good fellow ; yea, and a little hot water — but very 
little, for my soul is sad as I think of those days and knights of 
old." 

A knight is riding alone on his war-horse, with all his armour 
with him — and his luggage. His rank is shown by the name on 
his portmanteau, and his former address and present destination 
by a card which was attached. It had run, " Count Ludwig de 
Hombourg, Jerusalem, but the name of the Holy City had been 
dashed out with the pen, and that of Godesberg substituted." 
" By St. Hugo of kat7,enellenbogen," said the good knight, shiver- 
ing, "'tis colder here than at Damascus. Shall I be at Godesberg 
in time for dinner ? " He has come to see his friend Count Karl, 
Margrave of Godesberg. 

But at Godesberg everything is in distress and sorrow. There 
is a new inmate there, one Sir Gottfried, since whose arrival the 
knight of the castle has become a wretched man, having been 
taught to believe all evils of his wife, and of his child Otto, and a 
certain stranger, one Hildebrandt. Gottfried, we see with half an 
eye, has done it all. It is in vain that Ludwig de Hombourg tells 
his old friend Karl that this Gottfried is a thoroughly bad fellow, 
that he had been found to be a card-sharper in the Holy Land, and 
had been drummed out of his regiment. " 'Twas but some silly 
quarrel over the wine-cup," says Karl. "Hugo de Brodenel 
would have no black bottle on the board," We think we can re- 
member the quarrel of "Brodenel" and the black bottle, though 
so many things have taken place since that. 

There is a festival in the castle, ar>d Hildebrandt comes with 
the other guests. Then Ludwig's attention is called by poor Karl, 
the father, to a certain family likeness. Can it be that he is not 
the father of his own child ? He is playing cards with his friend 
Ludwig when that traitor Gottfried comes and whispers to him, 
and makes an appointment. " I will be there too," thought Count 
Ludwig, the good Knight of Hombourg. 

On the next morning, before the stranger knight had shaken off 



THACKERAY. 



89 



his slumbers, all "had been found out and everything done. The 
lady had been sent to a convent and her son to a monastery. The 
knight of the castle has no comfort but in his friend Gottfried, a 
distant cousin who is to inherit everything. All this is told to Sir 
Ludvvig — who immediately takes steps to repair the mischief. " A 
cup of coffee straight," says he to the servitors. " Bid the cook 
pack me a sausage and bread in paper, and the groom saddle 
Streitheno:st. We have far to ride." So this redresser of wronjrs 
starts off, leaving the Margrave in his grief. 

Then there is a great fight between Sir Ludwig and Sir Gott- 
fried, admirably told in the manner of the later chroniclers — a 
hermit sitting by and describing everything almost as well as 
Rebecca did on the tower. Sir Ludwig being in. the right, of 
course gains the day. But the escape of the fallen knight's horse 
is the cream of this chapter. ( "Away, ay, away! — away amid the 
green vineyards and golden cornfields ; away up the steep moun- 
tains, where he frightened the eagles in their eyries ; away down 
the clattering ravines, where the flashing cataracts tumble ; away 
through the dark pine-forests, where the hungry wolves are howl- 
ing ; away over the dreary wolds, where the wild wind walks alone ; 
away through the splashing quagmires, where the will-o'-the-wisp 
slunk frightened among the reeds ; away through light and darkness, 
storm and sunshine ; away by tower and town, highroad and ham- 
let. . . . Brave horse ! gallant steed ! snorting child of Araby ! 
On went the horse, over mountains, rivers, turnpikes, appiewomen ; 
and never stopped until he reached a Hvery-stable in Cologne, 
where is master was accustomed to put him u^^^'' 

The conquered knight, Sir Gottfried, of course reveals the 
truth. This Hildebrandt is no more than the lady's brother — as it 
happened a brother in disguise — and hence the hkeness. Wicked 
knights, when they die, always divulge their wicked secrets, and 
this knight Gottfried does so now. Sir Ludwig carries the news 
home to the afflicted husband and father; who of course instantly 
sends off messengers for his wife and son. The wife won't come. 
All she wants is to have her dresses and jewels sent to her. Of so 
cruel a husband she has had enough. As for the son, he has 
jumped out of a boat on the Rhine, as he was being carried to his 
monastery, and was drowned ! 

But he was not drowned, but had only dived. "The gallant 
boy swam on beneath the water, never lifting his head for a single 
moment between Godesberg and Cologne ; the distance being 
twenty-five or*thirty miles." 

Then he becomes an archer, dressed in green from head to 
foot. How it was is all told in the story ; and he goes to shoot for 
a prize at the Castle of Adolf the Duke of Cleeves. On his way 
he shoots a raven marvellously — almost 'as marvellously as did 
Robin Hood the twig in Ivanhoe. Then one of his companions is 
married, or nearly married, to the mysterious "Lady of Windeck" 
— would have been married but for Otto, and that the bishop and 
dean, who were dragged up from their long-ago graves to perform 



90 



THACKERAY. 



the ghostly ceremon}^ were prevented by the ill-timed mirth of 
a certain old canon of the church named Schidnischmidt. The 
reader has to read the name out loud before he recognises an old 
friend. But this of the Lady of Windeck is an episode. 

How at the shooting-match, which of course ensued, Otto shot 
for and won the heart of a fair lady, the duke's daughter, need "not 
be told here, nor how he quarrelled with the Rowski of Donner- 
blitz — the hideous and sulky, but rich and powerful, nobleman who 
had come to take the hand, whether he could win the heart or not, 
of the daughter of the duke. It is all arranged according to the 
proper and romantic order. Otto, though he enlists in the duke's 
archer-guard as simple soldier, contrives to fight with the Rowski 
de Donnerblitz, Margrave of Eulenschrenkenstein, and of course 
kills him. " ' Yield, yield. Sir Rowski ! ' shouted he, in a calm 
voice. A blow dealt madly at his head was the reply. It was the 
last blow that the Count of Eulenschrenkenstein ever struck in 
battle. The curse was on his lips as the crashing steel descended 
into his brain and split it in two. He rolled like a dog from his 
horse, his enemy's knee was in a moment on his chest, and the 
dagger of mercy at his throat, as the knight once more called upon 
him to yield." The knight was of course the archer who had 
come forward as an unknown champion, and had touched the 
Rowski's shield with the point of his lance. For this story, as 
well as the rest, is a burlesque on our dear old favourite Ivanhoe. 

That everything goes right at last, that the wife comes back 
from her monastery, and joins her jealous husband, and that the 
duke's daughter has always, in truth, known that the poor archer 
was a noble knight — these things are all matters of course. 

But the best of the three burlesques is Rebecca a7id Rowena, 
or A Romance upon Romance, which I need not tell my readers is 
a continuation of Ivanhoe. Of this burlesque it is the peculiar 
characteristic that, while it has been written to ridicule the persons 
and the incidents of that perhaps the most favourite novel in the 
English language, it has been so written that it would not have 
offended the author had he lived to read it, nor does it disgust or 
annoy those who most love the original. There is not a word in it 
having an intention to belittle Scott. It has sprung from the gen- 
uine humour created in Thackeray's mind by his aspect of the 
romantic. We remember how reticent, how dignified was Rowena 
— how cold we perhaps thought her, whether there was so little of 
that billing and cooing, that kissing and squeezing, between her 
and Ivanhoe which we used to think necessary to lovers' blisses. 
And there was left, too, on our minds an idea that Ivanhoe had 
liked the Jewess almost as well as Rowena, and that Rowena might 
possibly have become jealous. Thackeray's mind at once went to 
work and pictured to him a Rowena such as such a woman might 
become after marriage; and as Ivanhoe was of a melancholy 
nature and apt to be hipped, and grave, and silent, as a matter of 
course. Thackeray presumes him to have been henpecked after his 
marriasfe. 



THACKERAY. 91 

Our dear Wamba disturbs his mistress in some devotional con- 
versation with her chaplain, and the stern lady orders that the fool 
shall have three-dozen lashes. " I got you out of Front de Boeuf 's 
castle," said poor Wamba, piteously appealing to Sir Wilfrid of 
Ivanhoe, "and canst thou not save me from the lash ?" 

" Yes ; from Front de Boeuf 's castle, when you were locked up 
•with the yewess hi the tower f'' said Rowena, haughtily replying 
to the timid appeal of her husband. " Gurth, give him four-dozen " 
— and this was all poor Wamba got by applying for the mediation 
of his master. Then the satirist moralises : " Did you ever know 
a right-minded woman pardon another for being handsomer and 
more love-worthy than herself?" Rowena is "always flinging 
Rebecca into Ivanhoe's teeth ; " and altogether life at Rotherwood, 
as described by the later chronicles, is not very happy even when 
most domestic. Ivanhoe becomes sad and moody. He takes to 
drinking, and his lady does not forget to tell hito of it. " Ah, dear 
axe!" he exclaims, apostrophising his weapon, "ah, gentle steel! 
that was a merry time when I sent thee crashing into the pate of 
the Emir Abdul Melek ! " There was nothing left to him but his 
memories; and "in a word, his life was intolerable." So he de- 
termines that he will go and look after King Richard, who of 
course was wandering abroad. He anticipates a little difficulty 
with his wife ; but she is only too happy to let him go, comforting 
herself with the idea that Athelstane will look after her. So her 
husband starts on his journey. "Then Ivanhoe's trumpet blew. 
Then Rowena waved her pocket-handkerchief. Then the house- 
hold gave a shout. Then the pursuivant of the good knight, Sir 
Wilfrid the Crusader, flung out his banner — which was argent, a 
gules cramoisy with three Moors impaled — then Wamba gave a 
lash on his mule's haunch, and Ivanhoe, heaving a great sigh, 
turned the tail of his war-horse upon the castle of his fathers." 

Ivanhoe finds Coeur de Leon besieging the Castle of Chalons, 
and there they both do wondrous deeds, Ivanhoe always surpassing 
the king. The jealousy of the courtiers, the ingratitude of the 
king, and the melancholy of the knight, who is never comforted 
except when he has slaughtered some hundreds, are delighted. 
Roger de Backbite and Peter de Toadhole are intended to be quite 
real. Then his majesty sings, passing off as his own a song of 
Charles Lever's. Sir Wilfrid declares the truth, and twits the 
king with his falsehood, whereupon he has the guitar thrown at hfs 
head for his pains. He catches the guitar, however, gracefully in 
his left hand, and sings his own immortal ballad of King Canute-^ 
than which Thackeray never did anything better. 

" Might I stay the sun above us, good Sir Bishop ? " Canute cried ; 
"Could I bid the silver moon to pause upon her heavenly ride? 
If the moon obeys my orders, sure I can command the tide. 

Will the advancing waves obey me, Bishop, if I make the sign ? " 
Said the bishop, bowing lowly: " Land and sea, my lord, are thine." 
Canute turned towards the ocean : "Back," he said " thou foaming brine." 



92 



THACKERAY. 



But the sullen ocean answered with a louder, deeper roar, 

And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling, sounding on the shore ; 

Back the keeper and the bishop, back the king and courtiers bore. 

We >ptiust go to the book to look at the picture of the king as he 
is killing the youngest of the sons of the Count of Chalons. Tht)se 
illustrations of Doyle's are admirable. The size of tlie king's 
head, and the size of his battle-axe as contrasted with the size of 
the child, are burlesque all over. But the king has been wounded 
by a bolt from the bow of Sir Bertrand de Gourdon while he is 
slanightering the infant, and there is an end of him. Ivanhoe, too, 
is killed at the siege — Sir Robert de Backbite having stabbed him 
in the back during the scene. Had he not been then killed, his 
widow Rowena could not have married Athelstane, which she soon 
did after hearing the sad news ; nor could he have had that cele- 
brated epitaph in Latin and English : 

Hie est Guilfridus, belli dum vixit avidus. 
Cum gladeo et lancea Normannia et quoque Francia 
Verbera dura dabat. Per Turcos multum equitabat. 
Guilbertum occidit ; — atque Hyerosolyma vidit. 
Heu ! nunc sub fossa sunt tanti militis ossa. 
Uxor Athelstani est conjux castissima Thani.* 

The translation, we are told, was by Wamba : 

Under the stone you behold, Brian, the Templar untrue, 

Buried and coffined and cold, Fairly in tourney he slew; 

Lieth Sir Wilfrid the Bold. Saw Hierusalem too. 

Always he marched in advance, Now he is buried and gone, 

Warring in Flanders and France, Lying beneath the gray stone. 
Doughty with sword and with lance. Where shall you find such a one ? 

Famous in Saracen fight, Long time his widow deplored, 

Rode in his youth, the good Knight, Weeping, the fate of her lord, 
Scattering Paynims in flight. Sadly cut off by the sword. 

When she was eased of her pain, 
Came the good lord Athelstane,^ 
When her ladyship married again. 

The next chapter begins naturally as follows : " I trust nobody 
will suppose, from the events described in th« last chapter, that our 
friend Ivanhoe is really dead." He is of course cured of his 
wounds, though they take six years in the curing. And then he 
makes his way back to Rothervvood, in a friar's disguise, mu^h as 
he did on that former occasion when we first met him, and there is 

* I doubt that Thackeray did not write the Latin epitaph, but I hardly dare suggest 
the name of any author. Tlie "vixit avidus " is quite worthy of Thackeray ; but had he 
tried his hand at such mode of expression he would have done more of it. I should likl 
to know wiiether he had been in company with Father Prout at the tima. 



THACKERAY. 



93 



received by Athelstane and Rowena — and their boy ! — while Wamba 
sings him a song : 

Then you know the worth of a lass, 
Once you have come to forty year ! 

No one. of course, but Wamba knows Ivanhoe, who roams 
about the country, melancholy — as he of course would be — chari- 
table — as he perhaps might be — for we are specially told that he 
had a large fortune and nothing to do with it, and slaying robbers 
wherever he met them — but sad at heart all the time. Then there 
came a little burst of the author's own feelings, while he is bur- 
lesquing. " Ah my dear friends and British public, are there not 
others who are melancholy under a mask of gayety, and who in the 
midst of crowds are lonely ? Liston was a most melancholy man ; 
Grimaldi had feelings; and then others I wot of. Butpsha! — let 
us have the next chapter." In all of which there was a touch of 
earnestness. 

Ivanhoe's griefs were enhanced by the wickedness of King 
John, under whom he would not serve. " It was Sir Wilfrid of 
Ivanhoe, I need scarcely say, who got the Barons of England to 
league together and extort from the king that famous instrument 
and palladium of our liberties, at present in the British Museum, 
Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury — The Magna Charta." Athel- 
stane also quarrels with the king, whose orders he disobeys, and 
Rotherwood is attacked by the royal army. No one was of real 
service in the way of fighting except Ivanhoe — and how could he 
take up that cause.'' "No; he hanged to me," said the knight, 
bitterly. "This is a quarrel in which I can't interfere. Common 
politeness forbids. Let yonder ale-swilling Athelstane defend his 
— ha, ha ! — wife ; and my Lady Rowena guard her— ha, ha ! — son I " 
and he laughed wildly and madly. 

But Athelstane is killed— this time in earnest — and then Ivan- 
hoe rushes to the rescue. He finds Gurth dead at the park-lodge ; 
and though he is alone— having outridden his followers — he rushes 
up the chestnut avenue to the house, which is being attacked. 
" An Ivanhoe ! an Ivanhoe ! " he bellowed out with a shout that over- 
came all the din of battle ;— " Notre Dame a la recousse ! " and to 
hurl his lance through the midriff of Reginald de Bracy, who 
was commanding the assault— who fell howling with anguish— to 
wave his battle-axe over his own head, and to cut off those thirteen 
men-at-arms, was the work of an instant. " An Ivanhoe ! an Ivan- 
hoe ! " he still shouted, and down went a man as sure as he said 
'* hoe ! " 

Nevertheless he is again killed by multitudes, or very nearly — 
and has again to be cured by the tender nursing of Wamba. But 
Athelstane is really dead, and Rowena and the boy have to be 
found. He does his duty and finds them — ^just in^^time to be present 
at Rowena's death. She has been put in prison bv King John, and 
is in extremis when her first husband gets to her. " Wilfrid, my 



^4- 'THACKERAY 

early loved," * slowly gasped she, removing her gray hair from her 
furrowed temples, and gazing on her boy fondly as he nestled on 
Ivanhoe's knee — " promise me by St. Waltheof of Templestowe — 
promise me one boon ! " 

" I do," said Ivanhoe, clasping the boy, and thinking that it was 
to that little innocent that the promise was intended to apply. 

"By St. Waltheof?" 

" By St. Waltheof ! " 

" Promise me, then," gasped Rowena, staring wildly at him, 
*' that you will never marry a Jewess ! " 

" By St. Waltheof ! " cried Ivanhoe, " but this is too much," and 
he did not make the promise. 

"Having placed young Cedric at school at the Hall of Dothe- 
boys, in Yorkshire, and arranged his family affairs, Sir Wilfrid of 
Ivanhoe quitted a country which had no longer any charm for him, 
as there was no fighting to be done, and in which his stay was ren- 
dered less agreeable by the notion that King John would hang him." 
So he goes forth and fights again, in league with the Knights of 
St. John — the Templars naturally having a dislike to him because 
of Brian de Bois Guilbert. "The only fault that the great and gal- 
lant, though severe and ascetic Folko of Heydenbraten, the chief 
of the Order of St. John, found with the melancholy warrior whose 
lance did such service to the cause, was that he did not persecute 
the Jews, as so religious a knight should. So the Jews, in cursing 
Christains, always excepted the name of the Desdichado — or the 
double disinherited, as he now was — the Desdichado Doblado." 
Then came the battle of Alarcos, and the Moors were all but in 
possession of the whole of Spain. Sir Wilfrid, like other good 
Christians, cannot endure this, so he takes ship in Bohemia, where 
he happens to be quartered, and has himself carried to Barcelona, 
and proceeds " to slaughter the Moors forthwith." Tlien there is 
a scene in which Isaac of York comes on as a messenger, to ran- 
som from a Spanish knight, Don Beltram de Cuchilla y Tral:)UCO, y 
Espada, y Espelon, a little Moorish girl. The Spanish knight of 
course murders the little girl instead of taking the ransom. Two 
hundred thousand dirhems are offered, however much that may 
be ; but the knight, who happens to be in funds at the time, pre- 
fers to kill the little girl. All this is only necessary to the story as 
introducing Isaac of York. Sir Wilfrid is of course intent upon 
finding Rebecca. Through all his troubles and triumphs, from 
his gaining and his losing of Rowena, from the day on which he 
had been " locked Tip with the Jeivess in the tower^'' he had always 
been true to her. "Away from me !" said the old Jew, tottering. 
" Away, Rebecca is — dead ! " Then Ivanhoe goes out and kills 
fifty thousand Moors, and there is the picture of him — killing them. 

But Rebecca is not dead at all. Her father had said so because 
Rebecca had behaved very badly to him. She had refused to marry 

* There is something almost ilhiatured in his treatment of Rowena, who is very false in 
her declarations of love ; — and it is t'A be fear»d that by Rowena the author intends the 
norraail married lady of English society. 



THACKERAY. 9^ 

the Moorish prince, or any of her own people, the Jews, and had 
gone as far as to declare her passion for Ivanhoe and her resolution 
to be a Christian. All the Jews and Jewesses in Valencia turned 
against her — so that she was locked up in the back-kitchen and 
almost starved to death. Rut Ivanhoe found her, of course, and 
makes her Mrs. Ivanhoe, or Lady Wilfrid the second. Then 
Thackeray tells us how for many years he, Thackeray, had not 
ceased to feel that it ought to be so. " Indeed I have thought of 
it these five-and-twenty years — ever since, as a boy at school, I 
commenced the noble study of novels— ever since the day when, 
lying on sunny slopes, of half-holidays, the fair chivalrous figures 
and beautiful shapes of knights and ladies were visible to me, ever 
since I grew to love Rebecca, that sweetest creature of the poet's 
fancy, and longed to see her righted." 

And so, no doubt, it had been. The very burlesque had grown 
from the way in which his young imagination had been moved by 
Scott's romance. He had felt, from the time of those happy half- 
holidays in which he had been lucky enough to get hold of the novel, 
that according to all laws of poetic justice, Rebecca, as being the 
more beautiful and the more interesting of the heroines, was en- 
titled to the possession of the hero. We have all of us felt the 
same. But to him had been present at the same time all that is 
ludicrous in our ideas of middle-age chivalry; the absurdity of its 
recorded deeds, the bloodthirstiness of its recreations, the selfish- 
ness of its men, the falseness of its honour, the cringing of its 
loyalty, the tyranny of its princes. And so there came forth Re- 
becca and Rowena, all broad fun from beginning to end, but never 
without a purpose — the best burlesque, as I think, in our language. 



g6 THACKERdYs 



CHAPTER VII, 

THACKERAY'S LECTURES. 

In speaking of Thackeray's life, I have said why and how it 
was that he took upon himself to lecture, and have also told the 
reader that he was altogether successful in carrying out the views 
proposed to himself. Of his pecuhar manner of lecturing I have 
said but little, never having heard him. " He pounded along — 
very clearly," I have been told ; from which I surmise that there 
was no special grace of eloquence, but that he was always audible. 
I cannot imagine that he should have been ever eloquent. He 
could not have taken the trouble necessary with his voice, with his 
cadences, or with his outward appearance. I imagine that they 
who seem so naturally to fall into the proprieties of elocution 
have generally taken a great deal of trouble beyond that which the 
mere finding of their words has cost them. It is clearly to the 
matter of what he then gave the world, and not to the manner, that 
we must look for what interest is to be found in the lectures. 

Those on The English Humorists were given first. The sec- 
ond set was on The Four Georges. In the volume now before 
us The Georges are printed first, and the whole is produced simply 
as a part of Thackeray's literary work. Looked at, however, in 
that light, the merit of the two sets of biographical essays is very 
different. In the one we have all the anecdotes which could be 
brought together respecting four of our kings — who as men were 
not peculiar, though their reigns were, and will always be, famous, 
because the country during the period was increasing greatly in 
prosperity, and was ever strengthening the hold it had upon its 
liberties. In the other set the lecturer was a man of letters deal- 
ing with men of letters, and himself a prince among humorists of 
his own country and language. One could not imagine a better 
subject for such discourses from Thackeray's mouth than the 
latter. The former was not, I think, so good. 

In discussing the lives of kings the biographer may trust to 

personal details or to historical facts. He may take the man, and 

• say what good or evil may be said of him as a man ; — or he may 

take the period, and tell his readers what happened to the country 

while this or the other king was on the throne. In the case with 

. which we are dealing, the lecturer had not time enough or room 



THACKERAY, p/ 

enough for real history. His object was to > let his audience know 
of wfat nature were the men ; and we are bound to say that tbe 
pictures have not, on the whole, been flattering. It was almost 
necessary that with such a subject such could be the result. A 
story of family virtues, with princes and princesses well brought 
up, with happy family relations, all couleur de rose— as it would ot 
course become us to write if we were deahng wiUi the life of a 
living sovereign — would not be interesting. No one on going to 
hear"^ Thackeray lecture on the Georges expected that. There 
must be some piquancy given, or the lecture would be dull;— and 
the eulogy of personal virtues can seldom be piquant. It is diffi- 
cult to speak fittingly of a sovereign, either living or not, long since 
gone. You can hardly praise such a one without flattery. Yoy 
can hardly censure him without injustice. We are either ignorarst 
of his personal doings or we know them as secrets, which hava 
been divulged for the most part either falsely or treacherously-— 
often both falsely and treacherously. It is better, perhaps, that we 
should not deal with the personalities of princes. 

I believe that Thackeray fancied that he had spoken well oi: 
George III., and am sure that it was his intention to do so. B\lt 
the impression he leaves is poor. " He is said not to have cared 
for Shakespeare or tragedy much ; farces and pantomimes wer^ 
his joy ; — and especially when clown swallowed a carrot or a string* 
of sausages, he would laugh so outrageously that the lovely pri'Ds- 
cess by his side would have to say, ' My gracious monarch, do com*- 
pose yourself.' ' George, be a king ! ' were the words which she '^ 
— his mother — "was ever croaking in the ears of her son; and <* 
king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried to be/' 
'• He did his best; he worked according to his lights ; what virtues 
he knew he tried to practise ; what knowledge he could master ha 
strove to acquire." If the lectures were to be popular, it was abso- 
lutely necessary that they should be written in this strain. A lec- 
ture simply laudatory on the life of St. Paul would not draw eve.B. 
the bench of bishops to listen to it ; but were a flaw found in th?. 
apostle's life, the whole Church of England would be bound tO 
know all about it, I am quite sure that Thackeray believed every 
word that he said in the lectures, and that he intended to put \Vl 
the good and the bad, honestly, as they might come to his hand. 
We may be quite sure that he did not intend to flatter the royal 
family ; — equally sure that he would not calumniate. There wer.% 
however, so many difficulties to be encountered that T cannot but 
think that the subject was ill-chosen. In making them so amusing 
as he did, and so little offensive, great ingenuity was shown. 

I will now go back to t'le first series, in which the lectuTSJ* 
treated of Swift, Congreve, Addison, Steele, Prior, Gay, Pops^, 
Hogarth, Smollett, Fielding, Sterne, and Goldsmith. All the:5£> 
Thackeray has put in their proper order, placing the men from the 
date of their birth, except Prior, who was in truth the eldest of th© 
lot, but whom it was necessary to depose, in order that the great 
Swift might stand first on the list, and Smollett, who was not bom 



98 THACKERAY. 

till fourteen years after ^Fielding, eight years after Sterne, and who 
has been moved up, I presume, simply from caprice. From the 
birth of the first to the death of the last, was a period of nearly a 
hundred years. They were never absolutely all alive too-ether* 
but it was nearly so, Addison and Prior having died before Smollett 
was born. Whether we should accept as humorists the full cata- 
logue, maybe a question ; though we shall hardly wish to eliminate 
any one from such a dozen of names. Pope we should hardly 
define as a humorist, were we to be seeking for a definition spe- 
cially fit for him, though we shall certainly not deny the o-jft of 
humour to the author of The Rape of the Lqck, or to the translator 
of any portion of The Odysse_y. Nor should we have included 
Fielding or Smollett, in spite of Parson Adams and Tabitha 
Bramble, unless anxious to fill a good company. That Hogarth 
was specially a humorist no one will deny ; but in speaking of 
humorists we should have presumed, unless otherwise notified, 
that humorists in letters only had been intended. As Thackeray 
explains clearly that he means by a humorist, I may as well here 
repeat the passage : " If humour only meant laughter, you would 
scarcely feel more interest about humorous writers than about the 
private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who possesses in 
common with these the power of making you laugh. But the men 
regarding whose lives and stories your kind presence here shows 
that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of 
our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicufe. The hu- 
morous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, you-r pity, 
your kindness — your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture — • 
your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. 
To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the or- 
dinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself 
to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, 
and speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem him, — 
sometimes love him. And as his business is to mark other people's 
lives and peculiarities, we moralise upon his life when he is gone 
— and yesterday's preacher becomes the text for to-day's sermon." 
Having thus explained his purpose, Tiiackeray begins his task, 
and puts Swift in his. front rank as a humorist. The picture given 
of this great man has very manifestly the look of truth, and if true, 
is terrible indeed. We do, in fact, know it to' be true — even though 
it be admitted that there is still room left for a book to be written 
on the life of the fearful dean. Here was a man endued with an 
intellect pellucid as well as brilliant ; who could not only conceive 
but see also — with some fine instincts too ; whom fortune did not 
flout; whom circumstances fairly served ; but who, from first to 
last, was miserable himself, who made others miserable, and who 
deserved misery. Our business, during the page or two which we 
can give to the subject, is not with Swift, but with Thackeray's 
picture of Swift. It is painted with colours terribly strong and 
with shadows fearfully deep. " Would you like to have lived with 
him ? " Thackeray asks. Then he says how pleasant it would hav9 



THACKERAY. 



09 



been to have passed some time with Fielding, Johnson, or Gc Id- 
smith. " I should hke to have been Shakespeare's shoeblack," lie 
says. " But Swift ! If you had been his inferior in parts — and 
that, with a great respect for all persons present, I fear is only 
very likely — his equal in mere social station, he would have bulhed, 
scorned, and insulted you. If, undeterred by his great reputation, 
you had met him like a man, he would have quailed before you and 
not had the pluck to reply — and gone home, and years after written 
a foul epigram upon you." There is a picture ! " If you had been 
a lord with a blue riband, who flattered l:is vanity, or could help 
his ambition, he would have been the most delightful company in 
the world. . . . How he would have torn your enemies to pieces 
for you, and made fun of the Opposition ! His servility was so 
boisterous that it looked like independence." He was a man whose 
mind was never fixed on high things, but was striving always after 
something which, little as it might be, and successful as he was, 
should always be out of his reach. It had been his misfortune to 
become a clergyman, because the way to church preferment seemed 
to be the readiest. He became, as we all know, a dean — but never 
a bishop, and was therefore wretched. Thackeray describes him as 
a clerical highwayman, seizing on all he could get. But " the great 
prize has not yet come. The coach with the mitre and crozier in 
it, which he intends to have for his share, has been delayed on the 
way from St. James's ; and he waits and waits till nightfall, when 
his runners come and tell him that the coach has taken a different 
way and escaped him. So he fires his pistol into the air with a 
curse, and rides away into his own country ; " — or, in other words, 
takes a poor deanery in Ireland. 

Thackeray explains very correctly, as I think, the nature of the 
weapons which the man used — namely, the words and style with 
which he wrote. "That Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, 
Dublin, on November 30, 1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody 
will deny the sister-island the honour and glory; but it seems to 
\me he was no more an Irishman than a man born of English 
parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo. Goldsmith was an Irishman, and 
always an Irishman ; Steele was an Irishman, and always an Irish- 
man ; Swift's heart was English and in England, his habits English, 
his logic eminently English ; his statement is elaborately simple ; 
he shuns tropes and metaphors, and uses his ideas and words with 
a wise thrift and economy, as he used his money; — with which he 
could be generous and splendid upon great occasions, but which 
he husbanded when there was no need to spend it. He never in- 
dulges in needless extravagance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, profuse 
imagery. He lays his opinions before you with a grave simplicity 
and a perfect neatness." This is quite true of him, and the result 
is that though you may deny him sincerity, simplicity, huntanity, or 
good taste, you can hardly find fault with his language. 

Swift was a clergyman, and this is what Thackeray says of him 
in regard to his sacred profession. " I know of few things more 
conclusive as to the sincerity of Swift's religion, than his advice to 



lOo THACKERAY. 

poor John Gay to turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the 
J5ench ! Gay, the author of The Beggar s Opera ; Gay, the wildest 
of the wits about town ! It was this man that Jonathan Swift 
advised to take orders, to mount in a cassock and bands — just as 
he advised him to husband his shillings, and put his thousand 
pounds out to interest." 

It was not that he was without religion — or without, rather, his 
religious behefs and doubts, "for Swift," says Thackeray, "was a 
reverent, was a pious spirit. For Swift could love and could pray." 
Left to himself and to the natural thoughts of his mind, without 
those " orders " to which he had bound himself as a necessary part 
of his trade, he could have turned to his God with questionings 
which need not then have been heart breaking. " It is my behef," 
says Thackeray, " that he suffered frightfully from the conscious- 
ness of his own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far 
down as to put his apostasy out to hire." I doubt whether any of 
Swift's works are very much read now, but perhaps Gulliver's 
travels are oftener in the hands of modern readers than any other. 
Of all the satires in our language, it is probably the most cynical, 
the most absolutely illnatured, and therefore the falsest. Let 
those who care to form an opinion of Swift's mind from the best 
known of his works, turn to Thackeray's account of Gulliver. I can 
imagine no greater proof of misery than to have been able to write 
such a book as that. 

It is thus that the lecturer concludes his lecture about Swift: 
" He shrank away from all affections sooner or later. Stella and 
Vanessa both died near him, and away from him. He had not 
heart enough to see them die. He broke from his fastest friend, 
Sheridan. He slunk away from his fondest admirer. Pope. His 
laugh jars on one's ear after seven-score years. He was always 
alone — alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella's 
sweet smile came and shone on him. When that went, silence and 
utter night closed over him. An immense genius, an awful down- 
fall and ruin ! So great a man he seems to me, that thinking oif 
him is like thinking of an empire falling. We have other great 
names to mention — none, I think, however so great or so gloomy." 
And so we pass on from Swift, feehng that though the man was 
certainly a humorist, we have had as yet but little to do with 
humour. 

Congreve is the next who, however truly he may have been a 
humorist, is described here rather as a man of fashion. A man of 
fashion he certainly was, butis best known in our literature as a 
comedian — worshipping that Comic Muse to whom Thackeray 
hesitates to introduce his audience, because she is not only merry, 
but shameless also. Congreve's muse was aboui as bad as any 
muse that ever misbehaved herself — and I think, as little amusing. 
"Reading in these plays now,'- says Thackeray, "is like shutting 
your ears and looking at people dancing. What does it mean ?— 
the measures, the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling, and retreating, 
the cavaliers seul advancing upon those ladies — those ladies and 



THACKERAY. loi 

men twirling round at the end in a mad galop, after which every- 
body bows and the quaint rite is celebrated ? " It is always so with 
Congreve's plays, and Etherege's and Wycherley's. The world we 
meet there is not our world, and as we read the plays we have no 
sympathy with these unknown people. It was not that they lived 
so long ago. They are much nearer to us in time than the men 
and women who figured on the stage in the reign of James I. But 
their nature is farther from our nature. I'hey sparkle, but never 
warm. They are witty, but leave no impression. I might ahnost 
go further, and say that they are wicked, but never allure. " When 
Voltaire came to visit the great Congreve," says Thackeray, " the 
latter rather affected to despise his literary reputation : and in this, 
perhaps, the great Congreve was not far wrong. A touch of Steele's 
tenderness is^ worth all his finery ; a flash of Swift's lightning, a 
beam of Addison's pure sunshine, and his tawdry playhouse taper 
is invisible. But the ladies loved him, and he was undoubtedly a 
pretty fellow." 

There is no doubt as to the true humour of Addison, who next 
comes up before us, but I think that he makes hardly so good a 
subject for a lecturer as the great gloomy man of intellect, or the 
frivolous man of pleasure. Thackeray tells us all that is to be said 
about him as a humorist in so few lines that I may almost insert 
them on this page : " But it is not for his reputation as the great 
author of Cato and The Campaign, or for his merits as Secretary 
of State, or for his rank and high distinction as Lady Warwick's 
husband, or for his eminence as an examiner of pohtical questions 
on the Whig side, or a guardian of British liberties, that we admire 
Joseph Addison. It is as a Tattler of small talk and a Spectator 
of mankind that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleas- 
ure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in 
that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble natural voice. 
He came the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow ; the kind judge, 
who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about hanging 
and ruthless, a literary Jeffreys, in Addison's kind court only minor 
cases were tried ; — only peccadilloes and small sins against society, 
only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and hoops, or a nuisance 
in the abuse of beaux canes and snuffboxes." Steele set The 
Tatler a-going. " But with his friend's discovery of The Tatler, 
Addison's calling was found, and the most delightful Tattler in the 
world began to speak. He does not go very deep. Let gentle- 
men of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the plunge of the 
bathos, console themselves by thinking that he couldn't go very 
deep. There is no trace of suffering in his writing. He was so 
good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish — if I must use the 
word ! " 

Such was Addison as a hjmorist; and when the hearer shall 
have heard also — or the reader read — that this most charming 
Tattler also wrote Cato, became a Secretary of State, and married 
a countess, he will have learned all that Thackeray had to tell of 
him. 



I02 THACKERAY. 

Steele was one who stood much less high in the world's esteem, 
and who left behind him a much smaller name — but was quite Ad- 
dison's equal as a humorist and a wit. Addison, though he had 
the reputation of a toper, was respectability itself. Steele was 
almost always disreputable. He was brought from Ireland, placed 
at the Charter House, and then transferred to Oxford, where he 
became acquainted with Addison. Thackeray says that " Steele 
found Addison a stately college don at Oxford." The stateliness 
and the don's rank were attributable no doubt to the more sober 
character of the English lad, for, in fact, the two men were born 
in the same year, 1672. Steele, who during his life was affected 
by various different tastes, first turned himself to literature, but 
early in life was bitten by the hue of a red coat and became a 
trooper in the Horse Guards. To the end he vacillated in the 
same way. In that charming paper in The Tatler, in which he re- 
cords his father's death, his mother's griefs, his own most solemn 
and tender emotions, he says he is interrupted by the arrival of a 
hamper of wine, ' the same as is to be sold at Garraway's next 
week ; ' upon the receipt of which he sends for three friends, and 
they fall to instantly, drinking two bottles apiece, with great 
benefit to themselves, and not separating till two o'clock in the 
morning." 

He had two wives, whom he loved dearly and treated badly. 
He hired grand houses, and bought fine horses for which he could 
never pay. He was often religious, but more often drunk. As a 
man of letters, other men of letters who followed him, such as 
Thackeray, could not be very proud of him. But everybody loved 
him ; and he seems to have been the inventor of that flying litera- 
ture which, with many changes in form and manner, has done so 
much for the amusement and edification of readers ever since his 
time. He was always commencing, or carrying on — often editing* 
— some one of the numerous periodicals which appeared during 
his time. Thackeray mentions seven: The Tailer, The Spectator^ 
The Guardian^ The Englishinan^ The Lover, The Reader, and 
The Theatre J that three of them are well known to this day — the 
three first named — and are to be found in all libraries, is proof 
that his life was not thrown away. 

I almost question Prior's right to be in the list, unless, indeed, 
the mastery over well-turned conceits is to be included within the 
border of humour. But Thackeray had a strong liking for Prior, 
and in his own humorous way rebukes his audience for not being 
familiar with The Town and Country Mouse. He says that 
Prior's epigrams have the genuine sparkle, and compares Prior to 
Horace. " His song, his philosophy, his good sense, his happy, 
easy turns and melody, his loves, and his epicureanism, bear a great 
resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master." I 
cannot say that I agree with this. Prior is generally neat in his 
expression. Horace is happy — which is surely a great deal more. 

All that is said of Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett, and Fielding 
is worth reading, and maybe of great value both to those who 



THACKERAY. 



103 



have not time to study the authors, and to those who desire to 
have their own judgments somewhat guided, somewhat assisted. 
That they were all men of humor there can be no doubt. Whether 
either of them, except perhaps Gay, would have been specially 
ranked as a humorist among men of letters, may be a question. 

Sterne was a humorist, and employed his pen in that line, if ever 
a writer did so, and so was Goldsmith. Of the excellence and 
largeness of the disposition of the one, and the meanness and little- 
ness of the other, it is not necessary that I should here say much. 
But I will give a short passage from our author as to each. He has 
been quoting somewhat at length from Sterne, and thus he ends : 
" And with this pretty dance and chorus the volume artfully con- 
cludes. Even here one can't give the whole description. There 
is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better 
away, a latent corruption — a hint as of an impure presence. Some of 
that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and 
manners than ours — but not all. The four satyr's eyes leer out of 
the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote 
were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch 
penned were for pity and pardon." Now a line or two about Gold- 
smith, and I will then let my reader go to the volume and study the 
lectures for himself. " The poor fellow was never so friendless 
but that he could befriend some one ; never so pinched and wretched 
but he could give of his crust, and speak his word of compassion. 
If he had but his flute left, he would give that, and make the chil- 
dren happy in the dreary London courts." 

Of this, too, I will remind my readers — those who have book- 
shelves well filled to adorn their houses — that Goldsmith stands in 
the front where all the young people see the volumes. There are 
few among the young people who do not refresh their sense of hu- 
mour occasionally from that shelf ; Sterne is relegated to some 
distant and high corner. The less often that he is taken down the 
better. — Thackeray makes some' half excuse for him because of the 
greater freedom of the times. But " the times " were the same for 
the two. Both Sterne and Goldsmith wrote in the reign of George 
^^i. ; both died in the reign of George III. 



IQ4 



THACKERAY. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THACKERAY'S BALLADS. 



We have a volume of Thackeray's poms, republished under the 
aame of Ballads, which is, I think, to a great extent a misnomer, 
l-hey are all readable, almost all good, full of humour, and witH 
some fine touches of pathos, most happy in their versification, and, 
with a few exceptions, hitting well on the head the nail which he 
intended to hit. But they are not on that account ballads. Liter- 
i^Jiy, a ballad is a song ; but it has come to signify a short chronicle 
J^ verse, which may be political, or pathetic, or grotesque — or it 
'Tftay have all three characteristics or any two of them ; but not on 
hsX account is any grotesque poem a ballad — nor, of course, any 
.pathetic or any political poem. Jacob Omnium^s Hoss may fairly 
tie called a ballad, containing as it does a chronicle of a well-defined 
.rsnsaction ; and the story of King Canute is a ballad — one of the 
J^SSt that has been produced in our language in modern years. But 
such pieces as those called The End of the Flay Sind Vanitas Vani- 
iafttm, which are didactic as well as pathetic, are not ballads in the 
common sense; nor are such songs as The Mahogany Ti'ee, or the 
little collection called Love Songs made Easy. The majority of 
tise pieces are not ballads ; but if they be good of the kin^, we 
should be ungrateful to quarrel much with the name. 

How very good most of them are, I did not know till I re-read 
.;hem for the purpose of writing this chapter. There is a manifest 
tailing off in some few — which has come from that source of literary 
failure which is now so common. If a man write a book or a poem 
recause it is in him to write it— the motive power being altogether 
'ii himself, and coming from his desire to express himself— he will 
write it well, presuming him to be capable of the effort. _ But if he 
write his book or poem simply because a book or poem is required 
iferom him, let his capability be what it may, it is not unlikely that 
he will do it badly. Thackeray occasionally suffered from the 
weakness thus produced. A ballad from Policeman X—Bow Street 
.Ballads they were first called— was required by Pmick, and had to 
oe forthcoming, whatever might be the poet's humour, by a certain 
Tffme. Jacob Omnium's Hoss is excellent. His heart and feelmg 
were all there, on behalf of his friend, and against that obsolete old 
court of Justice. But we can tell well when he was looking through 



THACKERAY. 



I OS 



the police reports for a subject, and taking what chance might send 
him, without any special interest in the matter. The Knight and 
the Lady of Bath ^ and the Damages Two Hundred Pounds, as they 
were demanded at Guildford, taste as though they were written to 
order. 

Here, in his verses as in his prose, the charm of Thackeray's 
work lies in the mingling of humour with pathos and indignation. 
There is hardly a piece that is not more or less funny, hardly a 
piece that is not satirical ; — and in most of them, for those who will 
look a little below the surface, there is something that will touch 
them. Thackeray, though he rarely uttered a word, either with his 
pen or his mouth, in which there was not an intention to reach our 
sense of humour, never was only funny. When he was most de- 
termined to make us laugh, he had always a further purpose ; some 
pity was to be extracted from us on behalf of the sorrows of men, 
or some indignation at the evil done by them. 

This is the beginning of that story as to the Two Hundred 
Pounds, for which, as a ballad, I do not care very much: 

Special jurymen of England who admire your country's laws, 
And proclaim a British jury worthy of the nation's applause, 
Gaily compliment each other at the issue of a cause, 
Which was tried at Guildford 'sizes, this day week as ever was. 

Here he is indignant, not only in regard to some miscarriage of 
justice on that special occasion, but at the general unfitness of jury- 
men for the work confided to them. " Gaily compliment your- 
selves," he says, " on your beautiful constitution, from which come 
such beautiful results as those I am going to tell you!" When 
he reminded us that Ivanhoe had produced Magna Charta, there 
was a purpose of irony even there in regard to our vaunted free- 
dom. With all your Magna Charta and your juries, what are you 
but snobs ! There is nothing so often misguided as general indig- 
nation, and I think that in his judgment of outside things, in the 
measure which he usually took of them, Thackeray was very fre- 
quently misguided. A satirist by trade will learn to satirise every- 
thing, till the light of the sun and the moon's loveliness will be- 
come evil and mean to him. I think that he was mistaken in his 
views of things. But we have to do with him as a writer, not as a 
political economist or a politician. His indignation was all true, 
and the expression of it was often perfect. The lines in which he 
addresses that Pallis Court, at the end of Jacob Omnium's HosSy 
are almost sublime. 

O Pallis Court, you move Good sport it is to you 

My pity most profound. To grind the honest poor, 

A most amusing sport To pay their just or unjust debts 

You thought it, I'll be bound. With eight hundred per cent, for 

To saddle hup a three - pound Lor ; 

debt, Make haste and get your costes in, 

With two-and-twenty pound. They will not last much mox I 



io6 



THACKERAY. 



Come down from that tribewn, And go it, Jacob Homnium, 

Thou shameless and unjust ; And ply your iron pen, 

Thou swindle, picking pockets in And rise up, Sir John Jervis, 
The name of Truth august ; And shut me up that den ; 

Come down, thou hoary Blasphemy, That sty for fattening lawyers in. 
For die thou shalt and must. On the bones of honest men. 

" Come down from that tribewn, thou shameless and un- 
just ! " It is impossible not to feel that he felt this as he wrote it. 

There is a branch of his poetry which he calls — or which at 
any rate is now called, Lyra Hybernica, for which no doubt The 
Groves of Blarney was his model. There have been many imita- 
tions since, of which perhaps Barham's ballad on the coronation 
was the best, " When to Westminster the Royal Spinster and the 
Duke of Leinster all in order did repair! " Thackeray, in some 
of his attempts, has been equally droll and equally graphic. That 
on The Cristal Palace — not that at Sydenham, but its forerunner, 
the palace of the Great Exhibition — is very good, as the following 
catalogue of its contents will showt 



There's holy saints 
And window paints, 

By Maydiayval Pugin; 
Alhamborough Jones 
Did paint the tones 

Of yellow and gambouge in. 

There's fountains there 
And crosses fair ; 

There's water-gods with urns; 
There's organs three, 
To play, d'ye see .»* 

" God save the Queen," by turns, 

There's statues bright 
Of marble white, 

Of silver, and of copper ; 
And some in zinc, 
And some, I think. 

That isn't over proper. 

There's staym ingynes, 
That stands in lines, 

Enormous and amazing, 
That squeal and snort 



Like whales in sport, 
Or elephants a grazing. 

There's carts and gigs, 
And pins for pigs, 

There's dibblers and there's bar* 
rows, 
And ploughs like toys 
For little boys. 
And ilegant wheel -barrows. 

For thim genteels 
Who ride on wheels. 

There's plenty to indulge 'em; 
There's droskys snug 
From Paytersbug, 

And vayhycles from Bulgium. 

There's cabs on stands 
And shandthry danns ; 

There's waggons from New York 
here : 
There's Lapland sleighs 
Have crossed the seas, 
And jaunting cyars from Cork 
^ here. 



In writing this Thackeray was a little late with his copy for 
Punch; not, we should say, altogether an uncommon accident to 
him. It should have been with the editor early on Saturday, if 
not before, but did not come till late on Saturday evenino^. The 
editor, who was among men the most good-natured, and I should 
think the most forbearing, either could not, or in this case would 
not, insert it in the next week's issue, and Thackeray, angry and 



THACKERAY. 



107 



disgusted, sent it to The Times. In The Times of next Monday 
it appeared — very much, I should think, to the delight of the read- 
ers of that august newspaper. 

Mr. Molony's account of the ball given to the Nepaulese am^ 
bassadors by the Peninsular and Oriental Company, is so like Bar- 
ham's coronation in the account it gives of the guests, that one 
would fancy it must be by the same hand. 

The noble Chair* stud at the stair 

And bade the dhrums to thump ; and he 

Did thus evince to that Black Prince 
The welcome of his Company. t 

O fair the girls and rich the curls, 

And bright the oys you saw there was ; 

And fixed each oye you then could spoi 
On General Jung Bahawther was I 

This gineral great then tuck his sate, 

With all the other ginerals, 
Bedad his troat, his belt, his coat, 

All bleezed with precious minerals : 
And as he there, with princely air, 

Recloinin on his cushion was, 
All round about his royal chair 

The squeezin and the pushin was. 

O Pat, such girls, such jukes and earls, 

Such fashion and nobilitee ! 
Just think of Tim, and fancy him 

Amidst the high gentilitee ! 
There was the Lord de L'Huys, and the Portygeese 

Ministher and his lady there, 1 
And I recognised, with much surprise, 

Our messmate. Bob O'Grady, there. 

All these are very good fun — so good in humour and so good 
in expression, that it would be needless to criticise their peculiar 
dialect, were it not that Thackeray has made for himself a reputa- 
tion by his writing of Irish. In this he has been so entirely suc- 
cessful that for many English readers he has established a new 
language which may not irnproperly be called Hybernico-Thacke- 
rayan. If comedy is to be got from peculiarities of dialect, as no 
doubt it is, one form will do as well as another, so long as those 
who read it know better. So it has been with Thackeray's Irish, 
for in truth he was not familiar with the modes of pronunciation 
which make up Irish brogue. Therefore, though he is always 
droll, he is not true to nature. Many an Irishman coming to Lon- 
don, not unnaturally tries to imitate the talk of Londoners. You 
or I, reader, were we from the West, and were the dear County 

♦ Chair— »;■ <?., Chairman. t /. *•> The P. and O Company. 



io8 THACKERAY. 

Galway to send either of us to Parliament, would probably en- 
deavour to drop the dear brogue of our country, and in doing so 
we should make some mistakes. It was these mistakes which 
Thackeray took for the natural Irish tone. He was amused to 
hear a major called " Meejor," but was unaware that the sound 
arose from Pat's affection of English softness of speech. The ex- 
pression natural to the unadulterated Irishman would rather be 
" Ma-ajor." He discovers his own provinciaHsm, and trying to be 
polite and urbane, he says " Meejor," In one of the lines I have 
quoted there occurs the word " troat." Such a sound never came 
naturally from the mouth of an Irishman. He puts in an h instead 
of omitting it, and says "dhrink." He comes to London, and 
finding out that he is wrong with his "dhrink," he leaves out all 
the h's he can, and thus comes to "troat." It is this which Thack- 
eray has heard. There is a little piece called the Last Irish 
Grievance, to which Thackeray adds a still later grievance, by the 
false sounds which he elicits from the calumniated mouth of the 
pretended Irish poet. Slaves are "sleeves," places are " pleeces," 
Lord John is " Lard Jahn," fatal is " fetal," danger is " deenger," 
and native is " neetive." All these are unintended slanders. Tea, 
Hibernicd, is "tay," please is "plaise," sea is "say," and ease is 
"aise." The softer sound of e is broadened out by the natural 
Irishman — not, to my ear, without a certain euphony; but no one 
in Ireland says or hears the reverse. The Irishman who in Lon- 
don might talk of his " neetive " race, would be mincing his words 
to please the ear of the cockney. 

The Chronicle of the Drum would be a true ballad all through, 
were it not that there is tacked on to it a long moral in an altered 
metre. I do not much value the moral, but the ballad is excellent, 
not only in much of its versification and in the turns of its language, 
but in the quaint and true picture it gives of the French nation. 
The drummer, either by himself or by some of his family, has 
drummed through a century of French battling, caring much for his 
country and his glory, but understanding nothing of the causes for 
which he is enthusiastic. Whether for King, Republic, or Em 
peror, whether fighting and conquering or fighting and conquered, 
he is happy as long as he can beat his drum on a field of glory. But 
throughout his adventures there is a touch of chivalry about our 
drummer. In all the episodes of his country's career he feels much 
of patriotism and something of tenderness. It is thus he sings 
during the days of the Revolution : 

"We had taken the head of King Capet, 

We called for the blood of his wife ; 
Undaunted she came to the scaffold, 

And bared her fair neck to the knife. 
As she felt the foul fingers that touched her, 

She shrank, but she deigned not to speak* 
She looked with a royal disdain, 

And died with a blush on her cheek \ 



THACKERAY. 109 

*Twas thus that our country was saved! 

So told us the Safety Committee ! 
But, psha, I've the heart of a soldier — ♦ 

All gentleness, mercy, and pity. 
I loathed to assist at such deeds, 

And my drum beat its loudest of tunes, 
As we offered to justice offended. 

The blood of the bloody tribunes. 

Away with such foul recollections ! 

No more of the axe and the block. 
I saw the last fight of the sections, 

As they fell 'neath our guns at St. Rock. 
Young Bonaparte led us that day. 

And so it goes on, I will not continue the stanza, because it 
contains the worst rhyme that Thackeray ever permitted himself to 
use. The Chronicle of the Drum has not the finish which he 
achieved afterwards, but it is full of national feeling, and carries on 
its purpose to the end with an admirable persistency ; 

A curse on those British assassins 

Who ordered the slaughter of Ney ; 
A curse on Sir Hudson who tortured 

The life of our hero away. 
A curse on all Russians — I hate them ; 

On all Prussian and Austrian fry ; 
And, oh, but I pray we may meet them 

And fight them again ere I die. 

The White Squall — which I can hardly call a ballad, unless any 
description of a scene in verse may be included in the name — is 
surely one of the most graphic descriptions ever put into verse. 
Nothing written by Thackeray shows more plainly his power over 
words and rhymes. He draws his picture without a line omitted or 
a line too much, saying with apparent facility all that he has to say, 
and so saying it that every word conveys its natural meaning. 

When a squall, upon a sudden, 
Came o'er the waters scudding ; 
And the clouds began to gather, 
And the sea was lashed to lather. 
And the lowering thunder grumbled. 
And the lightning jumped and tumbled, 
And the ship and all the ocean 
Woke up in wild commotion. 
Then the wind set up a howling, 
And the poodle-dog a yowling, 
And the cocks began a crowing, 
And the old cow raised a lowing, 
As she heard the tempest blowing 
And fowls and geese did cackle, 
And the cordage and the tackle 



no THACKERAY,. 

Began to shriek and crackle ; 
And the spray dashed o'er the funnels, 
9 And down the deck in runnels ; 
And the rushing water soaks all, 
From the seamen in the fo'ksal 
To the stokers whose black faces 
Peer out of their bed-places ; 
And the captain, he was bawling, 
And the sailors pulling, hauling, 
And the quarter-deck tarpauling 
Was shivered in the squalling ; 
And the passengers awaken, 
Most pitifully shaken ; 
And the steward jumps up and hastens 
For the necessary basins. 

Then the Greeks they groaned and quivered^ 

And they knelt, and moaned, and shivered. 

As the plunging waters met them, 

And splashed and overset them j 

And they call in their emergence 

Upon countless saints and virgins ; 

And their marrowbones are bended, 

And they think the norld is ended. 

And the Turkish women for'ard 

Were frightened and behorror'rd ; 

And shrieking and bewildering, 

The mothers clutched their children ; 

The men sang " Allah! Illah I 

Mashallah Bis-millah ! " 

As the warning waters doused them, 

And splashed them and soused thcmj 

And they called upon the Prophet, 

And thought but little of it. 

Then all the fleas in Jewry 

Jumped up and bit like fury ; 

And the progeny of Jacob 

Did on the main-deck wake up. 

(I wot these greasy Rabbins 

Would never pay for cabins) ; 

And each man moaned and jabbered in 

His filthy Jewish gaberdine, 

In woe and lamentation, 

And howling consternation. 

And the splashing water drenches 

Their dirty brats and wenches ; 

And they crawl from bales and benches, 

In a hundred thousand stenches. 

This was the White Squall famous. 

Which latterly o'ercame us. 

Pe^ of Limavaddy has always been very popular, and the pub- 
lic have not, 1 think, been generally aware that the young lady in 



THACKERAY. m 

question lived in truth at Newton Limavady (with one d). But 
with the correct name Thackeray would hardly have been so suc- 
cessful with his rhymes. 

Citizen or Squire 

Tory, Whig, or Radi- 
cal would all desire 

Peg of I^imavaddy. 
Had I Homer's fire 

Or that of Sergeant Taddy 
Meetly I'd admire 

Peg of Limavaddy. 
And till I expire 

Or till I go mad I 
Will sing unto my lyre 

Peg of Limavaddy. 

The Cane-bottomed Chair is another, better, I think, than Peg 
of Limavaddy, as containing that mixture of burlesque with the 
pathetic which belonged so peculiarly to Thackeray, and which was 
indeed the very essence of his genius. 

But of all the cheap treasures that garnish my nest. 
There's one that I love and I cherish the best. 

For the finest of couches that's padded with hair 
I never would change thee, my cane-bottomed chair. 

'Tis a bandy-legged, high-bottomed, worm-eaten seat, 
With a creaking old back and twisted old feet ; 

But since the fair morning when Fanny sat there, 
I bless thee and love thee, old cane-bottomed chair. 

She comes from the past and revisits my room, 
She looks as she then did, all beauty and bloom; 

So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair. 

And yonder she sits in my cane-bottomed chair. 

This, in the volume which I have now before me, is followed by 
a picture of Fanny in the chair, to which I cannot but take excep- 
tion. I am quite sure that when Fanny graced the room and seat- 
ed herself in the chair of her old bachelor friend, she had not on a 
low dress and loosely-flowing drawing-room shawl, nor was there 
a footstool ready for her feet. I doubt also the headgear. Fanny 
on that occasion was dressed in her morning apparel, and had 
walked through the streets, carried no fan, and wore no brooch but 
one that might be necessary for pinning her shawl. 

The Gnat Cossack Epic is the longest of the ballads. It is a 
legend of St. Sophia of Kioff, telling how Father Hyacinth^ by the, 
aid of St. Sophia, whose wooden statue he carried with him, es- 
caped across the Borysthenes with all the Cossacks at his tail. It 
is very good fun, but not equal to many of the others. Nor is the 



112 THACKERAY, 

Carmen Lilliense quite to my taste. I should not have declared at 
once that it had come from Thackeray's hand, had I not known it. 
But who could doubt the Bouillabaisse? Who else could have 
written that ? Who at the same moment could have been so merry 
and so melancholy — could have gone so deep into the regrets of 
life, with words so appropriate to its jollities ? I do not know how 
far my readers will agree with me that to read it always must be a 
fresh pleasure ; but in order that they may agree with me, if they 
can, I will give it to them entire. If there be one whom it does 
not please, he will like nothing that Thackeray ever wrote in verse. 



THE BALLAD OF BOUILLABAISSE. 

A street there is in Paris famous, 

For which no rhyme our language yields, - 
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is— 

The New Street of the Little Fields ; 
And here's an inn, not rich and splendid, 

But still in comfortable case ; 
The which in youth I oft attended, 

To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse. 

This Bouillabaise a noble dish is — 

A sort of soup, or broth, or brew, 
Or hotch-potch of all sorts of fishes. 

That Greenwich never could outdo ; 
Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron. 

Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace : 
All these you eat at Terre's tavern, 

In that one dish of Bouillabaisse. 

Indeed, a rich and savoury stew 'tis; 

And true philosophers, me thinks. 
Who love all sorts of natural beauties, 

Should love good victuals and good drinki. 
And Cordelier or Benedictine 

Might gladly sure his lot embrace, 
Nor find a fast-day too afflicting 

Which served him up a Bouillabaisse. 

I wonder if the house still there is ? 

Yes, here the lamp is, as before ; 
The smiling red-checked ecaillere is 

Still opening oysters at the door. 
Is Terre' still alive and able ? 

I recollect his drole grimace ; 
He'd come and smile before your table, 

And hope you liked your Bouillabaisse. 

We enter — nothing's changed or older. 

" How's Monsieur Terre, waiter, pray ?'* 
The waiter stares and shrugs his shoulder— 

" Monsieur is dead this many a day." 



THACKERAY, 

* It is the lot of saint and sinner ; 

So honest Terttrs run his race." 
•* What will Monsieur require for dinner ?'* 

" Say, do you still cook Bouillabaisse ! " 

"Oh, oui. Monsieur," 's the waiter's answer^ 
" Quel vin Monsieur desire -t-il ? " 

** Tell me a good one." *' That I can, sir : 
The chambcrtin with yellow seal." 

•* So Terre's gone," I say, and sink in 
My old accustom 'd corner-place ; 

** He's done with feasting and with drinking^ 
With Burgundy and Bouillabaisse," 

My old accustomed corner here is, 

The table still is in the nook ; 
Ah ! vauish'd many a busy year is 

This well-known chair since last I took„ 
When first I saw ye cari luoghi, 

I'd scarce a beard upon my face. 
And now a grizzled, grim old fogy, 

I sit and wait for Bouillabaisse, 

Where are you, old companions trusty^ 

Of early days here met to dine ? 
Come, waiter ! quick, a flagon crusty ; 

I'll pledge them in the good old wine. 
The kind old voices and old faces 

My memory can quick retrace ; 
Around the board they take their places, 

And share the wine and Bouillabaisse. 

There^s Jack has made a wondrous marriage ; 

There's laughing Tom is laughing yet; 
There's brave Augustus drives his carriage ; 

There's poor old Fred in the Gazette ; 
O'er James's head the grass is growing. 

Good Lord ! the world has wagged apace 
Since here we set the claret flowing, 

And drank, and ate the Bouillabaisse. 

Ah me ! how quick the days are flitting ! 

I mind me of a time that's gone, 
When here I'd sit, as now I'm sitting, 

In this same place, — but not alone. 
A fair young face was nestled near me, 

A dear, dear face looked fondly up, 
And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me I 

There's no one now to share my cup. 



I drink it as the Fates ordain it. 

Come fill it, and have done with rhymes 
Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it 

In memorv of dear old times. 



114 THACKERAY. 

Welcome the wine, whate'er the seal is ; 

And sit you down and say your grace 
With thankful heart, whate'er the meal is. 

Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse. 

I am not disposed to say that Thackeray will hold a high place 
among English poets. He would have been the first to ridicule 
such an assumption made on his behalf. But I think that his 
verses will be more popular than those of many highly reputed 
poets, and that as years roll on they will gain rather than lose in 
Dublic estimation. 



THACKERAY, 



2tj 



CHAPTER IX. 

THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 

A NOVEL in style should be easy, lucid, and of course gram* 
matical. The same may be said of any book; but that which 
is intended to recreate should be easily understood — for which 
purpose lucid narration is an essential. In matter it should be 
moral and amusing. In manner it may be realistic, or sublime, or 
ludicrous ; or it may be all these if the author can combine them. 
As to Thackeray's performance in style and matter I will say some- 
thing further on. His manner was mainly realistic, and I will 
therefore speak first of that mode of expression which was pe- 
culiarly his own. 

Realism in style has not all the ease which seems to belong to 
it. It is the object of the author that affects it so to communicate 
with his reader that all his words shall seem to be natural to the 
occasion. We do not think the language of Dogberry natural, 
when he tells neighbour Seacole that "to write and read comes by 
nature." That is ludicrous. Nor is the language of Hamlet nat- 
ural when he shows to his mother the portrait of his father : 

See what a grace was seated on this brow; 
Hyperion's curls ; the front of Jove himself ; 
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command. 

That is sublime. Constance is natural when she turns away from 
the Cardinal, declaring that 

He talks to me that never had a son- 

In one respect both the sublime and ludicrous are easier than the 
realistic. They are not required to be true. A man with an im- 
agination and culture may feign either of them without knowing 
the ways of men. To be realistic you must know accurately that 
which you describe. How often do we find in novels that the 
author makes an attempt at realism and falls into a bathos of 
absurdity, because he cannot use appropriate language ? " No 
human being ever spoke like that," we say to ourselves — while we 
should not question the naturalness of the production, either in th<? 
grand or the ridiculous. : 



Il6 THACKERAY. 

And yet in very truth the realistic must not be true — but just 
so far removed from truth as to suit the erroneous idea of truth 
which the reader may be supposed to entertain. For were a novel- 
ist to narrate a conversation between two persons of fair but not 
high education, and to use the ill-arranged words and fragments of 
speech which are really common in such conversations, be would 
seem to have sunk to the ludicrous, and to be attributing to the in--' 
terlocutors a mode of language much beneath them. Though in 
fact true it would seem to be far from natural. But, on the other 
hand, were he to put words grammatically correct in the mouths of 
his personages, and to round off and to complete the spoken sen- 
tences, the ordinary reader would instantly feel such a style to be 
stilted and unreal. This reader would not analyse it, but would 
in some dim but sufficiently critical manner be aware that his 
author was not providing him with a naturally spoken dialogue. 
To produce the desired effect the narrator must go between the 
two. He must mount somewhat above the ordinary conversational 
powers of such persons as are to be represented — lest he disgust, 
but he must by no means soar into- correct phraseology— lest he 
offend. The realistic — by which we mean that which shall seem 
to be real — lies between the two, and in reaching it the writer has 
not only to keep his proper distance on both sides, but has to 
maintain varying distances in accordance with the position, mode 
of life, and education of the speakers. Lady Castlewood in Esmond 
would have been properly made to speak with absolute precision ; 
but she goes nearer to the mark than her more ignorant lord, the 
viscount ; less near, however, than her better-educated kinsman, 
Henry Esmond. He, however, is not made to speak altogether by 
the card, or he would be unnatural. Nor would each of them 
speak always in the same strain, but they would alter their language 
according to their companion — according even to the hour of the 
day. All this the reader unconsciously perceives, and will not 
think the language to be natural unless the proper variations be 
there. 

In simple narrative the rule is the same as in dialogue, though 
it does not admit of the same palpable deviation from correct con- 
struction. The story of any incident, to be realistic, will admit 
neither of sesquipedalian grandeur nor of grotesque images. The 
one gives an idea of romance and the other of burlesque, to neither 
pf which is truth supposed to appertain. We desire to soar fre- 
quently, and then we try romance. We desire to recreate our- 
selves with the easy and droll. Dulce est desipere in loco. Then 
we have recourse to burlesque. But in neither do we expect 
hum^n nature. 

• \ cnjmot but think that in the hands of the novelist the middle 
eourse is the most powerful. Much as w^ may dglight in burlesque, 
We cannot plaiiii for it the power of achieving great results, So 
much, I think, will be granted. For the sublime we look rather tQ 
poetry than to prose ; and though I will give one or two instances 
just now in which it has been used with great effect in prose fiction, 



THACKERAY. 



117 



it does not come home to the heart, teaching a lesson, as does the 
reah'stic. The girl who reads is touched by Lucy Ashton, but she 
feels herself to be convinced of the facts as to Jeanie Deans, and 
asks herself whether she might not emulate them. 

Now as to the realism of Thackeray, I must rather appeal to 
my readers than attempt to prove it by quotation. Whoever it is 
that speaks in his pages, does it not seem that such a person would 
certainly have used such words on such an occasion .? If there be 
need of examination to learn whether it be so or not, let the reader 
study all that falls from the mouth of Lady Castlewood through the 
novel called Esmojtd, or all that falls from the mouth of Beatrix. 
They are persons peculiarly situated — noble women, but who have 
still lived much out of the world. The former is always conscious 
of a sorrow ; the latter is always striving after an effect — and both 
on this account are difficult of management. A period for the 
story has been chosen which is strange and* unknown to us, and 
which has required a peculiar language. One would have said be- 
forehand that whatever might be the charms of the book, it would 
not be natural. And yet the ear is never wounded by a tone that is 
false. It is not always the case that in novel reading the ear should 
be wounded because the words spoken are unnatural. Bulwer 
does not wound, though he never puts into the mouth of any of his 
persons words such as would have been spoken. They are not 
expected from him. It is something else that he provides. From 
Thackeray they are expected — and from many others. But Thack- 
eray never disappoints. Whether it be a great duke, such as he who 
was to have married Beatrix, or a mean chaplain, such as Tusher, 
or Captain Steele the humorist, they talk — not as they would have 
talked probably, of which I am no judge — but as we feel that they 
might have talked. We find ourselves willing to take it as proved 
because it is there, which is the strongest possible evidence of the 
realistic capacity of the writer. 

As to the sublime in novels, it is not to be supposed that any 
very high rank of sublimity is required to put such works within 
the pale of that definition. I allude to those in which an attempt 
is made to soar above the ordinary actions and ordinary language 
of life. We may take as an instance The Mysteries of Udoipho. 
That is intended to be sublime throughout. Even the writer never 
for a moment thought of descending to real life. She must have 
been untrue to her own idea of her own business had she done so. 
It is all stilted — all at a certain altitude among the clouds. It has 
been in its time a popular book, and has had its world of readers. 
Those readers no doubt preferred the diluted romance of Mrs. 
Radcliff to the condensed realism of Fielding. At any rate, they 
did not look for realism. Pelham may be taken as another instance 
of the sublime, though there is so much in it that is of the world 
worldly, though an intentional fall to the ludicrous is often made 
in it. The personages talk in glittering dialogues, throwing about 
philosophy, science, and the classics, in a manner which is always 
suggestive and often amusing. The book is brilliant with intellect* 



Il8 THACKERAYi 

But no word is ever spoken as it would have been spoken — no de- 
tail is ever narrated as it would have occurred. Bulwer no doubt 
regarded novels as romantic, and would have looked with contempt 
on any junction of realism and romance, though, in varying his 
work, he did not think it beneath him to vary his sublimity with 
the ludicrous. The sublime in novels is no doubt most effective 
when it breaks out, as though by some burst of nature, in the midst 
of a story true to life. " If," said Evan Maccombich, " the Saxon 
gentlemen are laughing because a poor man such as me thinks my 
life, or the life of six of my degree, is worth that of Vich Ian Vohr, 
it's like enough they may be very right ; but if they laugh because 
they think I would not keep my word and come back to redeem 
him, I can tell them they ken neither the heart of a Hielandman 
nor the honour of a gentleman," That is sublime. And, again, 
when Balfour of Burley slaughters Bothwell, the death scene is 
sublime. " Die, blQodthirsty dog ! " said Burley. '* Die as thou 
liast lived! Die like the beasts that perish — hoping nothing, be- 
lieving nothing ! " — "And fearing nothing," said Bothwell. Horri- 
ble as is the picture, it is sublime. As is also that speech of Meg 
Merrilies, as she addresses Mr. Bertram, standing on the bank. 
"Ride your ways," said the gipsy; "ride your ways, Laird of 
Ellangowan ; ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram. This day have 
ye quenched seven smoking hearths ; see if the fire in your ain 
parlour burn the blyther for that. Yjs have riven the thack off 
seven cottar houses ; look if your ain roof-tree stand the faster. 
Ye may stable your stirks in the sheahngs at Derncleugh; see that 
the hare does not couch on the hearthstane at Ellangowan." That 
is romance, and reaches the very height of the sublime. That 
does not offend, impossible though it be that any old woman 
should have spoken such words, because it does in truth lift the 
reader tip among the bright stars. It is thus that the subHme may 
be mingled with the realistic, if the writer has the power. Thack- 
eray also rises in that way to a high pitch, though not in many in- 
stances. Romance does not often justify to him an absence of 
truth. The scene between Lady Castle wood and the Duke of 
Hamilton is one when she explains to her child's suitor who Henry 
Esmond is. " My daughter may receive presents from the head of 
our house," says the lady, speaking up for her kinsman. " My 
daughter may thankfully take kindness from her father's, her ' 
mother's, her brother's dearest friend." The whole scene is of 
the same nature, and is evidence of Thackeray's capacity for the 
sublime. And again, when the same lady welcomes the same kins- 
man on his return from the wars, she rises as high. But as I have 
already quoted a part^of the passage in the chapter on this novel I 
will not repeat it here. 

It may perhaps be said of the sublime in novels — which I have 
endeavoured to describe as not being generally of a high order — 
that it is apt to become cold, stilted, and unsatisfactory. What 
may be done by impossible castles among impossible mountains, 
peopled by impossible heroes and heroines, and fraught with im« . 



THACKERAY, 



119 



possible horrors, The Mysteries of Udolpho have shown us. But 
they require a patient reader, and one who can content himself with 
a long protracted and most unemotional excitement. The sublim- 
ity which is effected by sparkling speeches is better, if the speeches 
really have something in them beneath the sparkles. Those of 
Bulwer generally have. Those of his imitators are often without 
anything, the sparkles even hardly sparkling. At the best they 
fatigue ; and a novel, if it fatigues, is unpardonable. Its only ex- 
cuse is to be found ia the amusement it affords. It should in- 
struct also, no doubt, but it never will do so unless it hides its 
instruction and amuses. Scott understood all this, when he 
allowed himSelf only such sudden bursts as I have described. Even 
in The Bride of Lammermoor^ which I do not regard as among the 
best of his performances, as he soars high into the sublime, so does 
he descend low into the ludicrous. 

In this latter division of pure fiction — the burlesque, as it is 
commonly called, or the ludicrous — Thackeray is quite as much at 
home as in the realistic, though, the vehicle being less powerful, he 
has achieved smaller results by it. Manifest as are the objects in 
his view when he wrote The Hoggarty Diamond or The Legend of 
the Rhine^ they were less important and less evidently effected than 
those attempted by Vanity Fair and Pendennis, Captain Shindy, 
the Snob, does not tell us so plainly what is not a gentleman as does 
Colonel Newcome what is. Nevertheless, the ludicrous has, with 
Thackeray, been very powerful and very delightful. 

In trying to describe what is done by literature of this class, it is 
especially necessary to remember that different readers are affected 
in a different way. That which is one man's meat is another man's 
poison. In the sublime, when the really grand has been reached, 
it is the reader's own fault if he be not touched. We know that 
many are indifferent to the soliloquies of Hamlet, but we do not 
hesitate to declare to ourselves that they are so because they 
lack the power of appreciating grand language. We do not 
scruple to attribute to those who are indifferent some inferiority of 
intelligence. And in regard to the realistic, when the truth of a 
well-told story or life-like character does not come home, we think 
that then, too, there is deficiency in the critical ability. But there 
is nothing necessarily lacking to a man because he does not enjoy 
The Heathen Chinee or The Biglow Papers; and the man to whom 
these delights of American humour are leather and prunello may 
be of all the most enraptured by the wit of Sam Weller o*- the mock 
piety of Pecksniff. It is a matter of taste and not of intellect, as 
one man likes caviare after his dinner, while another prefers apple- 
pie ; and the man himself cannot, or, as far as we can see, does not, 
direct his own taste in the one matter more than in the other. 

Therefore I cannot ask others to share with me the delight 
which I have in the various and peculiar expressions of the ludic- 
rous which are common to Thackeray. Some considerable por- 
tion of it consists in bad spelling. We may say that Charles James 
Harrington Fitzroy Yellowplush, or C. Fitzjeames De La Pluclie, 



J[30 



THACKERAY, 



as he 13 afterwards called, would be nothing but for his " orthog- 
raphy so carefully iuaccuwate." As I have before said, Mrs. Mal- 
aprop had seemed to have reached the height of this humour, and 
m having done so to have made any repetition unpalatable. But 
Thackeray's studied blundering is altogether different from that of 
3heridan. Mrs. Malaprop uses her words in a delightfully wrong 
cense. Yellowplush would be a very intelligible, if not quite an ac- 
curate writer, had he not made for himself special forms of English 
words altogether new to the eye. 

" My ma wrapped up my buth in a mistry. I maybe illygitmit ; 
A may have been changed at nus ; but I've always had gen'l'm'nly 
"•/istes through life, and have no doubt that I come of a gen'l'm'nly 
«^'figum." We cannot admit that there is wit, or even humour, in 
t'ad spelling alone. Were it not that Yellowplush, with his bad 
spelling, had so much to say for himself, there would be nothing in 
:t; but there is always a sting of satire directed against some real 
vice, or some growing vulgarity, which is made sharper by the ab- 
surdity of the language. In The Diary of George IV. there are the 
rcllowing reflections on a certain correspondence : — " Wooden you 
phansy, now, that the author of such a letter, insteadofwritun about 
piipple of tip-top quality, was describin' Vinegar Yard .»* Would 
you beleave that the lady he was a-ritin' to was a chased modist 
.'.ady of honour and mother of a family ? O trumpery ! o morris ! 
;^ Homer says. This is a higeous pictur of manners, such as I 
■veap to think of, as every morl man must weap." We do not won- 
&tx that when he makes his *' ajew " he should have been called up 
lo be congratulated on the score of his literary performances by his 
aaster, before the Duke, and Lord Bagwig, and Dr. Larner, and 
^'' Sawedwadgeorgeearllittnbulwig." All that Yellowplush says or 
writes are among the pearls which lliackeray was continuallv scat- 
waring abroad. 

But this of the distinguished footman was only one of the forms 
6f the ludicrous which he was accustomed to use in the furtherance 
of some purpose which he had at heart. It was his practice to 
clothe things most revolting with an assumed grace and dignity, and 
to add to the weight of his condemnation by the astounding men- 
dacity of the parody thus drawn. There was a grim humour in this 
which has been displeasing to some, as seeming to hold out to vice 
a hand which has appeared for too long a time to be friendly. As 
we are disposed to be not altogether sympathetic with a detective 
policeman who shall have spent a jolly night with a delinquent, for 
the sake of tracing home the suspected guilt to his late comrade, so 
are some disposed to be almost angry with our author, who seems 
to be too much at home with his rascals, and to live with them on 
familiar terms till we doubt whether he does not forget their ras- 
cality. Barry Lyndon is the strongest example we have of this 
Style of the ludicrous, and the critics of whom I speak have thought 
^at our friendly relations with Barry have been too genial, too ap- 
}i>arently genuine, so that it might almost be doubtful whether dur- 
ing the narrative we might not, at this or the other crisis, be rather 



THACKERAY. 12 j 

with him than against him. " After all," the reader might say, on 
coming to that passage in which Barry defends his trade as a gam- 
bler — a passage which I have quoted in speaking of the novel — 
" after all, this man is more hero than scoundrel ; " so well is the 
burlesque humour maintained, so well does the scoundrel hide his 
own villany. I can easily understand that to some it should seem 
too lono- drawn out. To me it seems to be the perfection of humour — 
and of philosophy. If such a one us Barry Lyndon, a man full of 
intellect, can be made thus to love and cherish his vice, and to be- 
lieve in its beauty, how much more necessary is it to avoid the foot- 
steps which lead to it ? But, as I have said above, there is no 
standard by which to judge of the excellence of the ludicrous as 
there is of the sublime, and even the realistic. 

No writer ever had a stronger proclivity towards parody than 
Thackeray ; and we may, I think, confess that there is no form of 
literary drollery more dangerous. The parody will often mar the 
gem of which it coarsely reproduces the outward semblance. 
The word "damaged," used instead of "damask," has destroyed 
to my ear for ever the music of one of the sweetest passages in 
Shakespeare. But it must be acknowledged of Thackeray that, 
fond as he is of this branch of humour, he has done little or no in- 
jury by his parodies. They run over with fun, but are so contrived 
that they do not lessen the flavour of the original. I have given in 
one of the preceding chapters a little set of verses of his own 
called The Willow Tree., and his own parody on his own work. 
There the reader may see how effective a parody may be in destroy- 
ing the sentiment of the piece parodied. But in deahng with other 
authors he has been grotesque without being severely critical, and 
has been very like, without making ugly or distasteful that which 
he has imitated. No one who has admired Coningsby will admire 
it the less because of Codlingsby. Nor will the undoubted ro- 
mance of Eugene Aram be lessened in the estimation of any 
reader of novels by the well-told career of George de Barnwell. 
One may say that to laugh Ivanhoe out of face, or to lessen the 
glory of that immortal story, would be beyond the power of any 
farcical effect. Thackeray, in his Rowena and Rebecca., certainly 
had no such purpose. Nothing of Ivanhoe is injured, nothing 
made less valuable than it was before, yet, of all prose paro- 
dies in the language, it is perhaps the most perfect. Every 
character is maintained, every incident has a taste of Scott. It has 
the twang of Ivanhoe from beginning to end, and yet there is not 
a word in it by which the author oilvanhoezoyAd, have been offend- 
ed. But then there is the purpose beyond that of the mere 
parody. Prudish women have to be laughed at, and despotic kings, 
and parasite lords and bishops. The ludicrous alone is but poor 
fun ; but when the ludicrous has a meaning, it can be very effective 
in the hands of such a master as this. 

" He to die ! " resumed the bishop. " He a mortal like to us ! 
^Death was not for him intended, though communis omnibus. 
Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus! " 



122 THACKERAY. 

So much I have said of the manner in which Thackeray' did his 
work, endeavouring to represent human nature as he saw it, so that 
his readers should learn to love what is good, and to hate what is 
evil. As to the merits of his style, it will be necessary to insist on 
them the less, because it has been generally admitted to be easy, 
lucid, and grammatical. I call that style easy by which the writer 
has succeeded in conveying to the reader that which the reader is 
intended to receive with the least possible amount of trouble to 
him. I call that style lucid which conveys to the reader most 
accurately all that the writer wishes to convey on any subject. The 
two virtues will, I think, be seen to be very different. An author 
may wish to give an idea that a certain flavour is bitter. He shall 
leave a conviction that it is simply disagreeable. Then he is not 
lucid. But he shall convey so much as that, in such a manner as 
to give the reader no trouble in arriving at the conclusion. There- 
fore he is easy. The subject here suggested is as little compli- 
cated as possible; but in the intercourse which is going on con- 
tinually between writers and readers, affairs of all degrees of com- 
plication are continually being discussed, of a nature so ccm pli- 
cated that he inexperienced writer is puzzled at every turn to ex- 
press himself, and the altogether inartistic writer fails to do so. 
Who among writers has not to acknowledge that he is often unable 
to tell all that he has to tell ? Words refuse to do it for him. He 
struggles and stumbles and alters and adds, but finds at last that 
he has gone either too far or not quite far enough. Then there comes 
upon him the necessity of choosing between two evils. He must 
either give up the fulness of his thought, and content himself with 
presenting some fragment of it in that lucid arrangement of words 
which he affects ; or he must bring out his thought with ambages ; 
he must mass his sentences inconsequentially : he must struggle 
up hill almost hopelessly with his phrases — so that at the end the 
reader will have to labour as he himself has laboured, or else to 
leave behind much of the fruit which it has been intended that he 
should garner. It is the ill-fortune of some to be neither easy or 
lucid; and there is nothing more wonderful in the history of letters 
than the patience of readers when called upon to suffer under the 
double calamity. It is as though a man were reading a dialogue 
of Plato, understanding neither the subject nor the language. But 
it is often the case that one has to be sacrificed to the other. The 
pregnant writer will sometimes solace himself by declaring that it 
is not his business to supply intelligence to the reader ; and then, 
in throwing out the entirety of his thought, will not stop to remem- 
ber that he cannot hope to scatter his ideas far and wide unless 
he can make them easily intelligible. Then the writer who is de- 
termined that his book shall not be put down because it is trouble- 
some, is too apt to avoid the knotty bits and shirk the rocky turns, 
because he cannot with ease to himself make them easy to others. 
If this be acknowledged, I shall be held to be right in saying not 
only that ease and lucidity in style are different virtues, 1 ut that 
they are often opposed to each other. They may, however, be 



THACKERAY. 123 

combined, and then the writer will have really learned the art of 
writing. Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. It is to be 
done, I believe, in all languages. A man by art and practice shall 
at least obtain such a masterhood over words as to express all that 
he thinks, in phrases that shall be easily understood. 

In such a small space as can here be allowed, I cannot give in- 
stances to prove that this has been achieved by Thackeray. Nor 
would instances prove the existence of the virtue, though instances 
might the absence. The proof lies in the work of the man's life, 
and can only become plain to those who have read his writings. I 
must refer readers to their own experiences, and ask them whether 
they have found themselves compelled to study passages in Thack- 
eray in order that they might find a recondite meaning, or whether 
they have not been sure that they dhd the author have together 
understood all that there was to understand in the matter. Have 
they run backward over the passages, and then gone on not quite sure 
what the author meant .? If not, then he has been easy and lucid. 
We have not had it so easy with all modern writers, nor with all 
that are old. I may best, perhaps, explain my meaning by taking 
something written long ago ; something very valuable, in order that 
'I may not damage my argument by comparing the easiness of 
Thackeray with the harshness of some author who has in other 
respects failed of obtaining approbation. If you take the play of 
Cymbeline, you will, I think, find it to be anything but easy read- 
ing. Nor is Shakespeare always lucid. For purposes of his own 
he will sometimes force his readers to doubt his meaning, even 
after prolonged study. It has ever been so with Hamlet. My 
readers will not, I think, be so crossgrained with me as to suppose 
that I am putting Thackeray as a master of style above Shakespeare. 
I am only endeavouring to explain by reference to the great master 
the condition of literary production which he attained. Whatever 
Thackeray says, the reader cannot fail to understand ; and what- 
ever Thackeray attempts to communicate, he succeeds in conveying. 

That he is grammatical I must leave to my readers' judgment, 
with a simple assertion in his favour. There are some who say 
that grammar — by which I mean accuracy of composition, in ac- 
cordance with certain acknowledged rules — is only a means to an 
end ; and that if a writer can absolutely achieve the end by some 
other mode of his own, he need not regard the prescribed means. 
If a man can so write as to be easily understood, and to convey 
lucidly that which he has to convey without accuracy of grammar, 
why should he subject himself to unnecessary trammels ? Why 
not make a path for himself, if the path so made will certainly lead 
him whither he wishes to go ? The answer is, that no other 
path will lead others whither he wishes to carry them but that 
which is common to him and to those others. It is necessary that 
there should be a ground equally familiar to the writer and to his 
readers. If there Idc no such common ground, they will not come 
into full accord. There have been recusants who, by a certain 
acuteness of their own, have partly done so — wilful recusants ; but 



124 



THACKERAY. 



they have been recusants, not to the extent of discarding gram- 
mar — which no writer could do and not be altogether in the dark 
— but so far as to have created for themselves a phraseology which 
has been picturesque by reason of its ilHcit vagaries ; as a woman 
will sometimes please ill-instructed eyes and ears by little depart- 
ures from feminine propriety. They have probably laboured in 
their vocation as sedulously as though they had striven to be cor- 
rect, and have achieved at the best but a short-lived success — as is 
the case also with the unconventional female. The charm of the 
disorderly soon loses itself in the ugliness of disorder. And there 
are others rebellious from grammar, who are, however, hardly to be 
called rebels, because the laws which they break have never been 
altogether known to them. Among those very dear to me in Eng- 
lish literature, one or tvv^O rflight be named of either sort, whose 
works, though they have that in them which will insure to them a 
long life, will become from year to year less valuable and less vener- 
able, because their authors have either scorned or have not known 
that common ground of language on which the author and his 
readers should stand together. My purport here is only with 
Thackeray, and I say that he stands always on that commor* 
ground. He quarrels with none of the laws. As the lady who is 
most attentive to conventional propriety may still have her own 
fashion of dress and her own mode of speech, so had Thackeray 
very manifestly his own style ; but it is one the correctness of 
which has never been impugned. 

I hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose dress no one 
observes. I am not sure but that the same may be said of an 
author's written language. Only, where shall we find an example 
of such perfection ? Always easy, always lucid, always correct, we 
may find them ; but who is the writer, easy, lucid, and correct, who 
has not impregnated his writing with something of that personal 
flavour which we call mannerism ? To speak of authors well known 
to all readers — Does not The Rambler \.2JSy\.t of Johnson; The De^ 
dine a?id Fall., of Gibbon ; The Middle Ages, of Hallam ; The His- 
tory of England, of Macaulay; and The Invasion of the Crimea, of 
Kinglake ? Do we not know the elephantine tread of The Saturday, 
and the precise tone of The Spectator? I have sometimes thought 
that Swift has been nearest to the mark of any — writing English 
and not writing Swift. But I doubt whether an accurate observer 
would not trace even here the " mark of the beast." Thackeray, 
too, has a strong flavour of Thackeray. I am inclined to think that 
his most besetting sin in style — the little ear-mark by which he is 
most conspicuous — is a certain affected famiharity. He indulges 
too frequently in little confidences with individual readers, in which 
pretended allusions to himself are frequent. " What would you 
do ? what would you say now, if you were in such a position 1 " he 
asks. He describes this practice of his in the preface to Penden- 
nis. " It is a sort of confidential talk between Avriter and reader. 
... In the course of his volubility the perpetual speaker must of 
necessity lay bare his own weaknesses, vanities, peculiarities." In 



THACKERAY. 12^ 

the short contributions to periodicals on which he tried his 'prentice 
hand, such addresses and conversations were natural and effica- 
cious ; but in a larger work of fiction they cause an absence of that 
dignity to which even a novel may aspire. You feel that each 
morsel as you read it is a detached bit, and that it has all been 
written in detachments. The book is robbed of its integrity bv a 
certain good-humoured geniality of language, which -causes the 
reader to be almost too much at home with his author. There is a 
saying that familiarity breeds contempt, and I have been sometimes 
inclined to think that our author has sometimes failed to stand up 
for himself with sufficiency of " personal deportment." 

In other respects Thackeray's style is excellent. As I have 
said before, the reader always understands his words without an 
effort, and receives all that the author has to give. 

There now remains to be discussed the matter of our author's 
work. The manner and the style are but the natural wrappings in 
which the goods have been prepared for the market. Of these 
goods it is no doubt true that unless the wrappings be in some de- 
gree meritorious the article will not be accepted at all ; but it is the 
kernel which we seek, which, if it be not of itself sweet and digest- 
ible, cannot be made serviceable by any shell, however pretty or 
easy to be cracked. I have said previously that it is the business 
of a novel to instruct in morals and to amuse. I will go further, 
and will add, having been for many years a most prolific writer of 
novels myself, that I regard him who can put himself into close 
communication with young people year after year without making 
some attempt to do them good as a very sorry fellow indeed. How- 
ever poor your matter may be, however near you may come to that 
"foolishest of existing mortals,'* as Carlyle presumes some unfor- 
tunate novelist to be, still, if there be those who read your works, 
' they will undoubtedly be more or less influenced by what they find 
there. And it is because the novelist amuses that he is thus influ- 
ential. The sermon too often has no such effect, because it is ap- 
plied with the declared intention of having it. The palpable and 
overt dose the child rejects ; but that which is cunningly insinuated 
by the aid of jam or honey is accepted unconsciously, and goes on 
upon its curative mission. So it is with the novel. It is taken be- 
cause of its jam and honey. But, unlike the honest simple jam and 
honey of the household cupboard, it is never unmixed with physic. 
There will be the dose within it, either curative or poisonous. The 
girl will be taught modesty or immodesty, truth or falsehood ; the 
lad will be taught honour or dishonour, simplicity or affectation. 
Without the lesson the amusement will not be there. There are 
novels which certainly can teach nothing ; but then neither can 
they amuse any one. 

I should be said to insist absurdly on the power of my own 
confraternity if I were to declare that the bulk of the young people 
in the upper and middle classes receive their moral teaching chiefly 
from the novels they read. Mothers would no doubt think of their 
own sweet teaching ; fathers of the examples which they set ; and 



126 " THACKERAY, 

schoolmasters of the excellence of their instructions. Happy is the 
country that has such mothers, fathers, and schoolmasters! But 
the novelist creeps in closer than the schoolmaster, closer than the 
father, closer almost than the mother. He is the chosen guide, the 
tutor whom the young pupil chooses for herself. She retires with 
him, suspecting no lesson, safe against rebuke, throwing herself 
head and heart into the narration as she can hardly do into her 
task-work ; and there she is taught — how she shall learn to love ; 
how she shall receive the lover when he comes ; how far she should 
advance to meet the joy ; why she should be reticent, and not 
throw herself at once into this new delight. It is the same with 
the young man, though he would be more prone even than she to 
reject the suspicion of such tutorship. But he too will there learn 
either to speak the truth, or to lie ; and will receive from his novel 
lessons either of real manliness, or of that affected apishness and 
tailor-begotten demeanour which too many professors of the craft 
give out as their dearest precepts. 

At any rate the close intercourse is admitted. Where is the house 
now from which novels are tabooed ? Is it not common to allow 
them almost indiscriminately, so that young and old each chooses 
his own novel ? Shall he, then, to whom this close fellowship is 
allowed — this inner confidence — shall he not be careful what words 
he uses, and what thoughts he expresses, when he sits in council 
with his young friend ? This, which it will certainly be his duty 
to consider with so much care, will be the matter of his work. We 
know what was thought of such matter when Lydia in the play was 
driven to the necessity of flinging '■^Peregrine Pickle under the 
toilet," and thrusting " Lord Aimw ell under the sofa." We have 
got beyond that now, and are tolerably sure that our girls do not 
hide their novels. The more freely they are allowed, the more 
necessary is it that he who supplies shall take care that they are 
worthy of the trust that is given to them. 

Now let the reader ask himself what are the lessons which 
Thackeray has taught. Let him send his memory running back 
over all those characters of whom we have just been speaking, and 
ask himself whether any girl has been taught to be immodest, or 
any man unmanly, by what Thackeray has written. A novelist has 
two modes of teaching — by good example or bad. It is not to be 
supposed that because the person treated of be evil, therefore the 
precept will be evil. If so, some personages with whom we have 
been made well acquainted from our youth upwards would have 
been omitted in our early lessons. It may be a question whether 
the teaching is not more efficacious which comes from the evil ex- 
ample. What story was evermore powerful in showing the beauty 
of feminine reticence, and the horrors of feminine evil-doing, than 
the fate of Effie Deans .'' The Templar would have betrayed a 
woman to his lust, but has not encouraged others by the freedom 
of his life. Varney was utterly bad — but though a gay courtier, he 
has enticed no others to go the way that he went. wSo it has been 
with Thackeray. His examples have been generally of that kind 



THACKERAY. 



127 



—but they have all been efficacious in their teaching on the side ot 
modesty and manliness, truth and simplicity. When some girl 
shall have traced from first to last the character of Beatrix, what, 
let us ask, will be the result on her mind ? Beatrix was born noble, 
clever, beautiful, with certain material advantages, which it was 
within her compass to improve by her nobility, wit, and beauty. 
She was quite alive to that fact, and thought of those material ad- 
vantages, to the ulter exclusion, in our mind, of any idea of moral 
goodness. She realised it all, and told herself that that was the 
game she would play. " Twenty-five ! " says she ; " and in eight 
years no man has ever touched my heart ! " That is her boast 
when she is about to be married — her only boast of herself. "A 
most detestable young woman ! " some will say. '-An awful ex- 
ample ! " others will add. Not a doubt of it. She proves the mis- 
ery of her own career so fully that no one will follow it. The 
example is so awful that it will surely deter. The girl will declare 
to herself that not in that way will she look for the happiness which 
she hopes to enjoy ; and the young man will say, as he reads it, 
that no Beatrix shall touch his heart. 

You may go through all his characters with the same effect. 
Pendennis will be scorned because he is light; Warrington loved 
because he is strong and merciful ; Dobbin will be honoured be- 
cause he is unselfish ; , and the old colonel, though he be foolish, 
vain, and weak, almost worshipped because he is so true a gentle- 
man. It is in the handling of questions such as these that we have 
to look for the matter of the novehst — those moral lessons which he 
mixes up with his jam and his honey. I say that with Thackeray 
-the physic is always curative and never poisonous. He maybe ad- 
mitted safely into that close fellowship, and be allowed to accompany 
the dear ones to their retreats. The girl will never become bold 
under his preaching, or taught to throw herself at men's heads. 
Nor will the lad receive a false flashy idea of what becomes ayouth, 
when he is first about to take his place among men. 

As to that other question, whether Thackeray be amusing as 
well as salutary, I must leave it to public opinion. There is now 
being brought out of his works a more splendid edition than has 
ever been produced in any age or any country of the writings of 
such an author. A certain fixed number of copies only is being 
issued, and each copy will cost ^33 lis. when completed. It is un- 
derstood that a very large proportion of the edition has been 
already bought or ordered. Cost, it will be said, is a bad test of 
excellence. It will not prove the merit of a book any more than 
it will of a horse. But it is proof of the popularity of the book. 
Print and illustrate and bind up some novels how you will, no one 
will buy them. Previous to these costly volumes, there have been 
two entire editions of his works since the author's death, one com- 
paratively cheap and the other dear. Before his death his stories 
had been scattered in all imaginable forms. I may therefore assert 
that their charm has been proved by their popularity. 

There remains for us only this question — whether the nature of 



128 THACKERAY. 

Thackeray's works entitle him to be called a cynic. The word is 
one which is always used in a bad sense. " Of a dog ; currish," is 
the definition which we get from Johnson — quite correctly, and in 
accordance with its etymology. And he gives us examples. " How 
vilely does this cynic rhyme," he takes from Shakespeare ; and 
Addison speaks of a man degenerating into a cynic. That Thack- 
eray's nature was soft and kindly — gentle almost to a fault — has 
been shown elsewhere. But they who had called him a cynic have 
spoken of him merely as a writer — and as writer he has certainly 
taken upon himself the special task of barking at the vices and 
follies of the world around him. Any satirist might in the same 
way be called a cynic in so far as his satire goes. Swift was a 
cynic, certainly. Pope was cynical when he was a satiristo Juvena 
was all cynical, because he was all satirist. If that be what is 
meant, Thackeray was certainly a cynic. But that is not all that the 
word imphes. It intends to go back beyond the work of the man, 
and to describe his heart. It says of any satirist so described that 
he has given himself up to satire, not because things have been 
evil, but because he himself has been evil. Hamlet is a satirist, 
whereas Thersites is a cynic. If Thackeray be judged after this 
fashion, the word is as inappropriate to the writer as to the man. 

But it has to be confessed that Thackeray did allow his intel- 
lect to be too thoroughly saturated with the aspect of the ill side of 
things. We can trace-the operation of his mind from his earliest- 
days, when he commenced his parodies at school ; when he brought 
out The Snob at Cambridge, when he s&ntYelloivpiush out upon 
the world as a satirist on the doings of gentlemen generally ; when 
he wrote his Catherine, to show the vileness of the taste for what 
he would have called Newgate literature ; and The Hoggarty 
Diamond^ to attack bubble companies ; and Barry Lyndon^ to 
expose the pride which a ra§cal may take in his rescality. Becky 
Sharp, Major Pendennis, Beatrix, both as a young and as an old 
woman, were written with the same purpose. There is a touch of 
satire in every drawing that he made. A jeer is needed for some- 
thing that is ridiculous, scorn has to be thrown on something that 
is vile. The same feeling is to be found in every line of every 
ballad. 

VANITAS VANITATUM. 

Methinks the text is never stale, 

And life is every day renewing 
Fresh comments on the old old tale, 

Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin. 

Hark to the preacher, preaching still ! 
• ' He lifts his voice and cries his sermon. 

Here at St. Peter's of Cornhill, 

As yonder on the Mount of Hermon— 

For you and me to heart to take 
(O dear beloved brother readers). 

To-day — as when the good king spake 
Beneath the solemn Syrian cedars. 



THACKERAY, 



129 



It was just so with him always. He was " crying his sermon," 
hoping, if it might be so, to do something towards lessening the 
evils he saw around him. We all preach our sermon, but not 
always with the same earnestness. He had become so urgent in the 
cause, so loud in his denunciations, that he did not stop often to 
speak of the good things around him. Now and again he paused 
and blessed amid the torrent of his anathemas. There are Dobbin, 
and Esmond and Colonel Newcome. But his anathemas are the 
loudest. It has been so, I think, nearly always with the eloquent 
preachers. 

I will insert here — especially here at the end of this chapter, in 
which I have spoken of Thackeray's matter and manner of writing, 
because of the justice of the criticism conveyed — the lines which 
Lord Houghton wrote on his death, and which are to be found in the 
February number of The Cornhill of 1864, It was the first number 
printed after his death. I would add that, though no Dean applied 
for permission to bury Thackeray in Westminster Abbey, his bust 
was placed there without delay. What is needed by the nation in 
such a case is simply a lasting memorial there, where such memo- 
rials are most often seen and most highly honoured. But we can 
all of us sympathise with the feehng of the poet, writing immediately 
on the loss of such a friend : 

When one, whose nervous English verse 

Public and party hates defied, 
Who bore and bandied many a curse 

Of angry times — when Dryden died, 

Our royal abbey's Bishop-Dean 

Waited for no suggestive prayer, 
But, ere one day closed o'er the scene. 

Craved, as a boon, to lay him there. 

The wayward faith, the faulty life, 

Vanished before a nation's pain. 
Panther and Hind forgot their strife, 

And rival statesmen thronged the fane. 

O gentle censor of our age ! 

Prime master of our ampler tongue! 
Whose word of wit and generous page 

Were never wrath, except with wrong,— 

Fielding — without the manner's dross, 

Scott — with a spirit's larger room, 
What Prelate deems thy grave his loss .^ 

What Halifax erects thy tomb.'' 

But, may be, he — who so could draw 
The hidden great — the humble wise, 

"V elding with them to God's good law, 
Makes the Pantheon where he lies. 



ENOCH KOSOAirS SOILS' 




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LOYELL'S LIBRARY-CATALOGUE. 



Eyre's Acquittal 10 

, 20,000 Leagues Under 

the Sea, by Verne. . . .20 
. Anti-Slavery Days... .20 
Beauty's Daughters.. .20 
Beyond the Sunrise... .20 
Hard Times, Dickens .20 
Tom Cringle's Log. . . .20 

"Vanity Fair 30 

Underground Russia. .20 
Middlemarch, Eliot.. .20 

Do., Part II 20 

Sir Tom, Mrs Oiiphant .20 
Pelham, by Lytton. . . .20 

The Story of Ida 10 

Madcap Violet, Black .20 

The Little Pilgrim 10 

Kilmeny, by Black, .. .20 
Whist or Bumble- 
puppy V 10 

The Beautiful Wretch .20 

Her Mother's Sin 20 

Green Pastures and 

Piccadilly, Black ... .20 
The Mysterious Island .15 

^0 , PartTI 15 

Do., Part III 15 

Tom Brown at Oxford .15 

Do., Part II 15 

Thicker than Water. . .20 
In Silk Attire, Black. .20 
Scottish Chiefs, P't I. 20 

Do., Part II 20 

Willy Reilly, Carleton .20 
The Nautz Family... .20 
Great Expectations. . . .20 
Pendennis, Thackeray .20 

Do., Part II 20 

Widow Bedott Papers .20 
Daniel Deronda, Eliot. .20 

Do., Part II 20 

AltioraPe to, Oiiphant .20 
By the Gate of the Sea .15 
Tales of a Traveller.. .20 
Life and Voyages of 

Columbus P't I. .20 

Do. (Irving), Part II... .20 
The Pilgrim's Progress .20 
Martin Chuzzlewit. . . .20 

Do., Part II 20 

TheophrastusSuch... .10 
Disarmed, M. Edwards .15 
Eugene Aram, Lytton .20 
The Spanish Gypsy 

and Other Poems 20 

Cast Up by the Sea... .20 
MillontheFlo8s,P'tI ,15 

Do. (Eliot), Part II 15 

Brother Jacob, Eliot. .10 

The Executor 20 

American Notes 15 

TheNewcomes, Parti .20 

Do.,?artII 20 

The Privateersman. . . .20 
The Three Feathers. .20 

Phantom Fortune 20 

Red Eric, Ballantyne. .20 
Lady Silverdale'S 
Sweetheart, Black. . , .10 



217. The Four Macnicols. .10 

218. Mr. Pisistratus Brown .10 

219. Dombey & Son, Part I 20 
Do., Partll 20 

220. Book of Snobs 10 

221. Grimm's Fairy Tales.. .20 

222. The Disowned, Lytton .20 

223. Little Dorrit, Dickens. .20 
Do., Part II 20 

224. Abbotsford and New- 

stead Abbey, Irving. .10 

225. Oliver Goldsmith 10 

226. The Fire Brigade 20 

227 Rifle and Hound in 

Ceylon 20 

228. Our Mutual Friend... .20 
Do. Part II 20 

229. Paris Sketches 15 

230. Belinda, Broughton... .20 

231. Nicholas Nickleby 20 

Do., Partll 20 

232 Monarch Mincing Lane .20 

233. Eight Years Wander- 

ing in Ceylon, Baker .20 

234. Pictures from Italy 15 

235. Adventures of Philip. .15 
Do., Partll 15 

236. Knickerbocker His- 

tory of New York .. . .20 

237. TheBoyatMugby 10 

238. The Virginians, P't I. .20 
Do., Partll 20 

239. Erling the Bold 20 

240. Keneim Chillingly 20 

241. Deep Down.. 20 

242. Samuel Brohl & Co. .. .20 

243. Gautran, by Farjeon.. .20 

244. Bleak House, Part I. . .20 
Do., Partll 20 

245. What Will He Do Wi' It .20 
Do., Partll 20 

246. Sketches of Young 

Couples 10 

247. Devereux, Lytton 20 

248. Life of Webster, 2 pts. .30 

249. The Crayon Papers. . . .20 

250. TheCaxtons, Lytton. .15 
Do., Partll.. 15 

251. Autobiography of An- 

thony Trollope .20 

252. Critical Reviews, by 

Thackeray .10 

253. Lucretia, Lytton, P't I .20 

254. Peter, the Whaler. ... .20 

255. Last of the Barons.. .15 
Do., Partll 15 

256. Eastern Sketches 15 

257. All in a Garden Fair. .20 

258. File No. 113, Gaboriau .20 

259. ThePari8ians,Lytton. .20 
Do., Part II 20 

260. Mrs. Darling's Letters .20 

261. Master Humphrey's 

Clock 10 

262. Fatal Boots, Thackr'y .10 

263. The Alhambra, Irving .15 

264. The Four Georges. .. .10 

265. Plutarch'8LiYe8,5pt8l.OO 

266. Under tlie Red Flag. . . .10 



267. The Haunted House.. .10 

268. When the Ship Comes 

Home 10 

269. One False, both Pair.. .20 

270. Mudfog Papers... 10 

371. My Novel, by Bulwer- 

Lytton. 3 parts 60 

272. Conquest of Granada.. .20 

273. Sketches by Boz 20 

274. A Christmas Carol 15 

275. lone Stewart, Linton.. .20 

276. Harold, Lytton, Part I .15 
Do., Partll 15 

277. Dora Thome , 20 

278. Maid of Athens 20 

279. The Conquest of Spain .10 

280. Fitzboodle Papers 10 

281. Bracebridge Hall 20 

282. The Uncommercial 

Traveler 20 

283. Roundabout Papers... .20 

284. Rossmoyne, Duchess. .20 

285. A Legend of the Rhine .10 

286. Cox's Diary 10 

287. Beyond Pardon, 20 

288. Somebody's Luggage, 

and Mrs. Lirriper's 
Lodgings 10 

289. Godolphin, Lytton 20 

290. Salmagundi, Irving 20 

291. Famous Funny Fel- 

lows, Clemens 20 

292. Irish Sketches 20 

293. The Battle of Life 10 

294. Pilgrims of the Rhine .15 

295. Random Shots, Adeler .20 

296. Men's Wives 10 

297. Mystery of Edwin 

Drood, by Dickena. . . .20 

298. Reprinced Pieces from 

C.Dickens... 20 

299. Astoria, by W. Irving. .20 

300. Novels by Eminent 

Hands 10 

301. Spanish Voyages 20 

302. No Thoroughfare 10 

303. Character Sketches... .10 

304. Christmas Books 20 

305. A Tour on the Prairies ,10 

306. Ballads of Thackeray.. .15 

307. Yellowplush Papers. . . .10 

308. Life of Mahomet, P't I .15 
Do., Part II 15 

309. Sketches and Travels 

In London, Thack' ray .10 

310. Life of Goldsmith 20 

311. Capt. Bonneville 20 

312. Golden Girls, Alan Muir .20 
8l^. English Humorists ... .15 

314. Moorish Chronicles... .10 

315. Winifred Power .80 

316. Great Hoggarty Dia- 

mond 10 

317. Pausanias, Lytton 15 

318. The New Abelard 20 

319. A Real Queen 20 

320. The Rose and the Ring .20 

321. Wolfert' 8 Roost, Irving .10 

322. Mark Seaworth 20 



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in brain work^ — would be saved from the fatal resort to chloral and other 
destructive stimulants^ if they would have recourBS to a remedy so simple 
and BO efficacious." 

Emilt Fatthvitli.. 

Phtbicians hatb preschibkd over 600,000 Packaoes because tket 
XMOW ITS Composition, that it is not a becrbt remedy, ajtd 

TSAT THE FORMULA IS FRUTTED OV EVERT LASEIt 

For Sale by Drusrsrlata or by BCail, #Xa 

F. CROSBY CO., 664 and 666 Sixth Avenue, NewTorkJ 



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